initial commit of ebook 25803HEADmain

261 files changed, 23700 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/25803-8.txt b/25803-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88e9ecc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7858 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Keepers of the King's Peace
+
+Author: Edgar Wallace
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2008 [EBook #25803]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THE KEEPERS OF
+ THE KING'S PEACE
+
+ BY
+ EDGAR WALLACE
+
+ WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
+ LONDON AND MELBOURNE
+
+
+
+
+ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS LTD.,
+ LONDON AND TONBRIDGE
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAP.                                                      PAGE
+
+    I BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER                              5
+
+   II BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION                             28
+
+  III THE MAKER OF STORMS                                    53
+
+   IV BONES AND THE WIRELESS                                 75
+
+    V THE REMEDY                                             99
+
+   VI THE MEDICINE MAN                                      117
+
+  VII BONES, KING-MAKER                                     135
+
+ VIII THE TAMER OF BEASTS                                   154
+
+   IX THE MERCENARIES                                       169
+
+    X THE WATERS OF MADNESS                                 191
+
+   XI EYE TO EYE                                            215
+
+  XII THE HOODED KING                                       233
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+
+ PAT
+
+ (P. M. C. W.)
+
+
+
+
+THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER
+
+
+To Isongo, which stands upon the tributary of that name, came a woman of
+the Isisi who had lost her husband through a providential tree falling
+upon him. I say "providential," for it was notorious that he was an evil
+man, a drinker of beer and a favourite of many bad persons. Also he made
+magic in the forest, and was reputedly the familiar of Bashunbi the
+devil brother of M'shimba-M'shamba. He beat his wives, and once had set
+fire to his house from sheer wickedness. So that when he was borne back
+to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked
+themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped
+through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion
+of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than
+the occasion called for.
+
+An old man named D'wiri, who knew every step of every dance, saw this
+and said in his stern way that it was shameless. But he was old and was,
+moreover, in fear for the decorum of his own obsequies if these
+outrageous departures from custom were approved or allowed to pass
+without reprimand.
+
+When M'lama, the wife of G'mami, had seen her lord depart in the canoe
+for burial in the middle island and had wailed her conventional grief,
+she washed the dust from her body at the river's edge and went back to
+her hut. And all that was grief for the dead man was washed away with
+the dust of mourning.
+
+Many moons came out of the sky, were wasted and died before the woman
+M'lama showed signs of her gifts. It is said that they appeared one
+night after a great storm wherein lightning played such strange tricks
+upon the river that even the old man D'wiri could not remember parallel
+instances.
+
+In the night the wife of a hunter named E'sani-Osoni brought a dying
+child into the hut of the widow. He had been choked by a fish-bone and
+was _in extremis_ when M'lama put her hand upon his head and straightway
+the bone flew from his mouth, "and there was a cry terrible to
+hear--such a cry as a leopard makes when he is pursued by ghosts."
+
+A week later a baby girl fell into a terrible fit and M'lama had laid
+her hand upon it and behold! it slept from that moment.
+
+Ahmet, chief of the Government spies, heard of these happenings and came
+a three days' journey by river to Isongo.
+
+"What are these stories of miracles?" he asked.
+
+"_Capita_," said the chief, using the term of regard which is employed
+in the Belgian Congo, "this woman M'lama is a true witch and has great
+gifts, for she raises the dead by the touch of her hand. This I have
+seen. Also it is said that when U'gomi, the woodcutter, made a fault,
+cutting his foot in two, this woman healed him marvellously."
+
+"I will see this M'lama," said Ahmet importantly.
+
+He found her in her hut tossing four bones idly. These were the shanks
+of goats, and each time they fell differently.
+
+"O Ahmet," she said, when he entered, "you have a wife who is sick, also
+a first-born boy who does not speak though he is more than six seasons
+old."
+
+Ahmet squatted down by her side.
+
+"Woman," said he, "tell me something that is not the talk of river and I
+will believe your magic."
+
+"To-morrow your master, the lord Sandi, will send you a book which will
+give you happiness," she said.
+
+"Every day my lord sends me a book," retorted the sceptical Ahmet, "and
+each brings me happiness. Also it is common talk that at this time
+there come messengers carrying bags of silver and salt to pay men
+according to their services."
+
+Undismayed she tried her last shot.
+
+"You have a crooked finger which none can straighten--behold!"
+
+She took his hand in hers and pressed the injured phlange. A sharp pain
+shot up his arm and he winced, pulling back his hand--but the year-old
+dislocation which had defied the effort of the coast doctor was
+straightened out, and though the movement was exquisitely painful he
+could bend it.
+
+"I see you are a true witch," he said, greatly impressed, for a native
+has a horror of deformity of any kind, and he sent back word of the
+phenomenon to Sanders.
+
+Sanders at the same time was in receipt of other news which alternately
+pleased him and filled him with panic. The mail had come in by fast
+launch and had brought Captain Hamilton of the Houssas a very bulky
+letter written in a feminine hand. He had broken the glad news to
+Commissioner Sanders, but that gentleman was not certain in his mind
+whether the startling intelligence conveyed by the letter was good or
+bad.
+
+"I'm sure the country will suit her," he said, "this part of the country
+at any rate--but what will Bones say?"
+
+"Bones!" repeated Captain Hamilton scornfully. "What the dickens does
+it matter what Bones says?"
+
+Nevertheless, he went to the sea-end of the verandah, and his roar
+rivalled the thunder of the surf.
+
+"Bones!"
+
+There was no answer and for an excellent reason.
+
+Sanders came out of the bungalow, his helmet on the back of his head, a
+cheroot tilted dizzily.
+
+"Where is he?" he asked.
+
+Hamilton turned.
+
+"I asked him to--at least I didn't ask him, he volunteered--to peg out a
+trench line."
+
+"Expect an invasion?" asked Sanders.
+
+Hamilton grinned.
+
+"Bones does," he said. "He's full of the idea, and offered to give me
+tips on the way a trench should be dug--he's feeling rotten about things
+... you know what I mean. His regiment was at Mons."
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"I understand," he said quietly. "And you ... you're a jolly good
+soldier, Hamilton--how do you feel about it all?"
+
+Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"They would have taken me for the Cameroons, but somebody had to stay,"
+he said quietly. "After all, it is one's business to ... to do one's job
+in the station of life to which it has pleased God to call him. This is
+my work ... here."
+
+Sanders laid his hand on the other's shoulder.
+
+"That's the game as it should be played," he said, and his blue eyes
+were as soft and as tender as a woman's. "There is no war here--we are
+the keepers of the King's peace, Hamilton."
+
+"It's rotten...."
+
+"I know--I feel that way myself. We're out of it--the glory of it--the
+chance of it--the tragedy of it. And there are others. Think of the men
+in India eating their hearts out ... praying for the order that will
+carry them from the comfort of their lives to the misery and the
+death--and the splendour, I grant you--of war."
+
+He sighed and looked wistfully to the blue sea.
+
+Hamilton beckoned a Houssa corporal who was crossing the garden of the
+Residency.
+
+"Ho, Mustaf," he said, in his queer coast Arabic, "where shall I look
+for my lord Tibbetti?"
+
+The corporal turned and pointed to the woods which begin at the back of
+the Residency and carry without a break for three hundred miles.
+
+"Lord, he went there carrying many strange things--also there went with
+him Ali Abid, his servant."
+
+Hamilton reached through an open window of the bungalow and fished out
+his helmet with his walking-stick.
+
+"We'll find Bones," he said grimly; "he's been gone three hours and he's
+had time to re-plan Verdun."
+
+It took some time to discover the working party, but when it was found
+the trouble was well repaid.
+
+Bones was stretched on a canvas chair under the shade of a big Isisi
+palm. His helmet was tipped forward so that the brim rested on the
+bridge of his nose, his thin red arms were folded on his breast, and
+their gentle rise and fall testified to his shame. Two pegs had been
+driven in, and between them a string sagged half-heartedly.
+
+Curled up under a near-by bush was, presumably, Ali Abid--presumably,
+because all that was visible was a very broad stretch of brown satin
+skin which showed between the waistline of a pair of white cotton
+trousers and a duck jacket.
+
+They looked down at the unconscious Bones for a long time in silence.
+
+"What will he say when I kick him?" asked Hamilton. "You can have the
+first guess."
+
+Sanders frowned thoughtfully.
+
+"He'll say that he was thinking out a new system of communicating
+trenches," he said. "He's been boring me to tears over saps and things."
+
+Hamilton shook his head.
+
+"Wrong, sir," he said; "that isn't the lie he'll tell. He will say that
+I kept him up so late last night working at the men's pay-sheets that he
+couldn't keep awake."
+
+Bones slept on.
+
+"He may say that it was coffee after tiffin," suggested Sanders after a
+while; "he said the other day that coffee always made him sleep."
+
+"'Swoon' was the word he used, sir," corrected Hamilton. "I don't think
+he'll offer that suggestion now--the only other excuse I can think of is
+that he was repeating the Bomongo irregular verbs. Bones!"
+
+He stooped and broke off a long grass and inserted it in the right ear
+of Lieutenant Tibbetts, twiddling the end delicately. Bones made a
+feeble clutch at his ear, but did not open his eyes.
+
+"Bones!" said Hamilton, and kicked him less gently. "Get up, you lazy
+devil--there's an invasion."
+
+Bones leapt to his feet and staggered a little; blinked fiercely at his
+superior and saluted.
+
+"Enemy on the left flank, sir," he reported stiffly. "Shall we have
+dinner or take a taxi?"
+
+"Wake up, Napoleon," begged Hamilton, "you're at Waterloo."
+
+Bones blinked more slowly.
+
+"I'm afraid I've been unconscious, dear old officer," he confessed. "The
+fact is----"
+
+"Listen to this, everybody," said Hamilton admiringly.
+
+"The fact is, sir," said Bones, with dignity, "I fell asleep--that
+beastly coffee I had after lunch, added to the fatigue of sittin' up
+half the night with those jolly old accounts of yours, got the better of
+me. I was sittin' down workin' out one of the dinkiest little ideas in
+trenches--a sort of communicatin' trench where you needn't get wet in
+the rainiest weather--when I--well, I just swooned off."
+
+Hamilton looked disappointed.
+
+"Weren't you doing anything with the Bomongo verbs?" he demanded.
+
+A light came to Bones's eyes.
+
+"By Jove, sir!" he said heartily, "that was it, of course.... The last
+thing I remember was...."
+
+"Kick that man of yours and come back to the bungalow," Hamilton
+interrupted, "there's a job for you, my boy."
+
+He walked across and stirred the second sleeper with the toe of his
+boot.
+
+Ali Abid wriggled round and sat up.
+
+He was square of face, with a large mouth and two very big brown eyes.
+He was enormously fat, but it was not fat of the flabby type. Though he
+called himself Ali, it was, as Bones admitted, "sheer swank" to do so,
+for this man had "coast" written all over him.
+
+He got up slowly and saluted first his master, then Sanders, and lastly
+Hamilton.
+
+Bones had found him at Cape Coast Castle on the occasion of a joy-ride
+which the young officer had taken on a British man-of-war. Ali Abid had
+been the heaven-sent servant, and though Sanders had a horror of natives
+who spoke English, the English of Ali Abid was his very own.
+
+He had been for five years the servant of Professor Garrileigh, the
+eminent bacteriologist, the account of whose researches in the field of
+tropical medicines fill eight volumes of closely-printed matter, every
+page of which contains words which are not to be found in most lexicons.
+
+They walked back to the Residency, Ali Abid in the rear.
+
+"I want you to go up to the Isongo, Bones," said Sanders; "there may be
+some trouble there--a woman is working miracles."
+
+"He might get a new head," murmured Hamilton, but Bones pretended not to
+hear.
+
+"Use your tact and get back before the 17th for the party."
+
+"The----?" asked Bones.
+
+He had an irritating trick of employing extravagant gestures of a
+fairly commonplace kind. Thus, if he desired to hear a statement
+repeated--though he had heard it well enough the first time--he
+would bend his head with a puzzled wrinkle of forehead, put his hand
+to his ear and wait anxiously, even painfully, for the repetition.
+
+"You heard what the Commissioner said," growled Hamilton.
+"Party--P-A-R-T-Y."
+
+"My birthday is not until April, your Excellency," said Bones.
+
+"I'd guess the date--but what's the use?" interposed Hamilton.
+
+"It isn't a birthday party, Bones," said Sanders. "We are giving a
+house-warming for Miss Hamilton."
+
+Bones gasped, and turned an incredulous eye upon his chief.
+
+"You haven't a sister, surely, dear old officer?" he asked.
+
+"Why the dickens shouldn't I have a sister?" demanded his chief.
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"A matter of deduction, sir," he said quietly. "Absence of all evidence
+of a soothin' and lovin' influence in your lonely an' unsympathetic
+upbringin'; hardness of heart an' a disposition to nag, combined with a
+rough and unpromisin' exterior--a sister, good Lord!"
+
+"Anyway, she's coming, Bones," said Hamilton; "and she's looking forward
+to seeing you--I've written an awful lot about you."
+
+Bones smirked.
+
+"Of course," he said, "you've overdone it a bit--women hate to be
+disillusioned. What you ought to have done, sir, is to describe me as a
+sort of ass--genial and all that sort of thing, but a commonplace sort
+of ass."
+
+Hamilton nodded.
+
+"That's exactly what I've done, Bones," he said. "I told her how Bosambo
+did you in the eye for twenty pounds, and how you fell into the water
+looking for buried treasure, and how the Isisi tried to sell you a
+flying crocodile and would have sold it too, if it hadn't been for my
+timely arrival. I told her----"
+
+"I think you've said enough, sir."
+
+Bones was very red and very haughty.
+
+"Far be it from me to resent your attitude or contradict your calumnies.
+Miss Hamilton will see very little of me. An inflexible sense of duty
+will keep me away from the frivolous circle of society, sir. Alert an'
+sleepless----"
+
+"Trenches," said Hamilton brutally.
+
+Bones winced, regarded his superior for a moment with pain, saluted, and
+turning on his heel, stalked away, followed by Ali Abid no less pained.
+
+He left at dawn the next morning, and both Sanders and Hamilton came
+down to the concrete quay to see the _Zaire_ start on her journey.
+Sanders gave his final instructions--
+
+"If the woman is upsetting the people, arrest her; if she has too big a
+hold on them, arrest her; but if she is just amusing them, come back."
+
+"And don't forget the 17th," said Hamilton.
+
+"I may arrive a little late for that," said Bones gravely. "I don't
+wish to be a skeleton at your jolly old festive board, dear old
+sportsman--you will excuse my absence to Miss Hamilton. I shall
+probably have a headache and all that sort of thing."
+
+He waved a sad farewell as the _Zaire_ passed round the bend of the
+river, and looked, as he desired to look, a melancholy figure with his
+huge pipe in his mouth and his hands thrust dejectedly into his trousers
+pockets.
+
+Once out of sight he became his own jovial self.
+
+"Lieutenant Ali," he said, "get out my log and put it in old Sanders'
+cabin, make me a cup of tea and keep her jolly old head east, east by
+north."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said Ali in excellent English.
+
+The "log" which Bones kept was one of the secret documents which never
+come under the eye of the superior authorities. There were such entries
+as--
+
+     "Wind N.N.W. Sea calm. Hostile craft sighted on port bow, at 10.31
+     a.m. General Quarters sounded 10.32. Interrogated Captain of the
+     hostile craft and warned him not to fish in fair-way. Sighted Cape
+     M'Gooboori 12.17, stopped for lunch and wood."
+
+What though Cape M'Gooboori was the village of that name and the "calm
+sea" was no more than the placid bosom of the Great River? What though
+Bones's "hostile craft" was a dilapidated canoe, manned by one aged and
+bewildered man of the Isisi engaged in spearing fish? Bones saw all
+things through the rosy spectacles of adventurous youth denied its
+proper share of experience.
+
+At sunset the _Zaire_ came gingerly through the shoals that run out from
+the Isongo beach, and Bones went ashore to conduct his investigations.
+It chanced that the evening had been chosen by M'lama, the witch, for
+certain wonderful manifestations, and the village was almost deserted.
+
+In a wood and in a place of green trees M'lama sat tossing her sheep
+shanks, and a dense throng of solemn men and women squatted or sat or
+tiptoed about her--leaving her a respectable space for her operations. A
+bright fire crackled and glowed at her side, and into this, from time to
+time, she thrust little sticks of plaited straw and drew them forth
+blazing and spluttering until with a quick breath she extinguished the
+flame and examined the grey ash.
+
+"Listen, all people," she said, "and be silent, lest my great ju-ju
+strike you dead. What man gave me this?"
+
+"It was I, M'lama," said an eager woman, her face wrinkled with
+apprehension as she held up her brown palm.
+
+The witch peered forward at the speaker.
+
+"O F'sela!" she chanted, "there is a man-child for thee who shall be
+greater than chiefs; also you will suffer from a sickness which shall
+make you mad."
+
+"O ko!"
+
+Half dismayed by the promise of her own fate; half exalted by the career
+the witch had sketched for her unborn son, the woman stared
+incredulously, fearfully at the swaying figure by the fire.
+
+Again a plaited stick went into the fire, was withdrawn and blown out,
+and the woman again prophesied.
+
+And sometimes it was of honours and riches she spoke, and sometimes--and
+more often--of death and disaster. Into this shuddering group strode
+Bones, very finely clad in white raiment yet limp withal, for the night
+was close and the way had been long and rough.
+
+The sitters scrambled to their feet, their knuckles at their teeth, for
+this was a moment of great embarrassment.
+
+"Oh, M'lama," said Bones agreeably, and spoke in the soft dialect of the
+Isisi by-the-River, "prophesy for me!"
+
+She looked up sullenly, divining trouble for herself.
+
+"Lord," she said, with a certain smooth venom, "there is a great
+sickness for you--and behold you will go far away and die, and none
+shall miss you."
+
+Bones went very red, and shook an indignant forefinger at the offending
+prophetess.
+
+"You're a wicked old storyteller!" he stammered. "You're depressin' the
+people--you naughty girl! I hate you--I simply loathe you!"
+
+As he spoke in English she was not impressed.
+
+"Goin' about the country puttin' people off their grub, by Jove!" he
+stormed; "tellin' stories ... oh, dash it, I shall have to be awfully
+severe with you!"
+
+Severe he was, for he arrested her, to the relief of her audience, who
+waited long enough to discover whether or not her ju-ju would strike him
+dead, and being obviously disappointed by her failure to provide this
+spectacle, melted away.
+
+Close to the gangway of the _Zaire_ she persuaded one of her Houssa
+guard to release his hold. She persuaded him by the simple expedient of
+burying her sharp white teeth in the fleshy part of his arm--and bolted.
+They captured her half mad with panic and fear of her unknown fate, and
+brought her to the boat.
+
+Bones, fussing about the struggling group, dancing with excitement, was
+honourably wounded by the chance contact of his nose with a wild and
+whirling fist.
+
+"Put her in the store cabin!" he commanded breathlessly. "Oh, what a
+wicked woman!"
+
+In the morning as the boat got under way Ali came to him with a
+distressing story.
+
+"Your Excellency will be pained to hear," he said, "that the female
+prisoner has eradicated her costume."
+
+"Eradicated...?" repeated the puzzled Bones, gently touching the patch
+of sticking-plaster on his nose.
+
+"In the night," explained this former slave of science, "the subject has
+developed symptoms of mania, and has entirely dispensed with her
+clothes--to wit, by destruction."
+
+"She's torn up her clothes?" gasped Bones, his hair rising and Ali
+nodded.
+
+Now, the dress of a native woman varies according to the degree in
+which she falls under missionary influence. Isongo was well within
+the sphere of the River Mission, and so M'lama's costume consisted
+of a tight-fitting piece of print which wound round and round the body
+in the manner of a kilt, covering the figure from armpit to feet.
+
+Bones went to the open window of the prison cabin, and steadfastly
+averting his gaze, called--
+
+"M'lama!"
+
+No reply came, and he called again.
+
+"M'lama," he said gently, in the river dialect, "what shall Sandi say to
+this evil that you do?"
+
+There was no reply, only a snuffling sound of woe.
+
+"Oh, ai!" sobbed the voice.
+
+"M'lama, presently we shall come to the Mission house where the God-men
+are, and I will bring you clothing--these you will put on you," said
+Bones, still staring blankly over the side of the ship at the waters
+which foamed past her low hull; "for if my lord Sandi see you as I see
+you--I mean as I wouldn't for the world see you, you improper person,"
+he corrected himself hastily in English--"if my lord Sandi saw you, he
+would feel great shame. Also," he added, as a horrible thought made him
+go cold all over, "also the lady who comes to my lord Militini--oh,
+lor!"
+
+These last two words were in English.
+
+Fortunately there was a Jesuit settlement near by, and here Bones
+stopped and interviewed the stout and genial priest in charge.
+
+"It's curious how they all do it," reflected the priest, as he led the
+way to his storehouse. "I've known 'em to tear up their clothes in an
+East End police cell--white folk, the same as you and I."
+
+He rummaged in a big box and produced certain garments.
+
+"My last consignment from a well-meaning London congregation," he
+smiled, and flung out a heap of dresses, hats, stockings and shoes. "If
+they'd sent a roll or two of print I might have used them--but strong
+religious convictions do not entirely harmonize with a last year's Paris
+model."
+
+Bones, flushed and unhappy, grabbed an armful of clothing, and showering
+the chuckling priest with an incoherent medley of apology and thanks,
+hurried back to the _Zaire_.
+
+"Behold, M'lama," he said, as he thrust his loot through the window of
+the little deck-house, "there are many grand things such as great ladies
+wear--now you shall appear before Sandi beautiful to see."
+
+He logged the happening in characteristic language, and was in the midst
+of this literary exercise when the tiny steamer charged a sandbank, and
+before her engines could slow or reverse she had slid to the top and
+rested in two feet of water.
+
+A rueful Bones surveyed the situation and returned to his cabin to
+conclude his diary with--
+
+     "12.19 struck a reef off B'lidi Bay. Fear vessel total wreck. Boats
+     all ready for lowering."
+
+As a matter of fact there were neither boats to lower nor need to lower
+them, because the crew were already standing in the river (up to their
+hips) and were endeavouring to push the _Zaire_ to deep water.
+
+In this they were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours
+until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the
+_Zaire_ clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of
+his salvage.
+
+He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck,
+and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal
+she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore
+a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced
+deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing
+ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.
+
+"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.
+
+The rest of the journey was uneventful until the _Zaire_ had reached the
+northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly
+cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on
+which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had
+isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.
+
+Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea
+through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and
+western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the
+bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with
+a sense of his resourcefulness--and incidentally present himself in the
+most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily
+life.
+
+He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now....
+
+The _Zaire_ was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and
+agile person might have stepped ashore.
+
+M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.
+
+He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the
+space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in
+such breeze as there was.
+
+"Hi! Don't do that ... naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but
+she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of
+the _Zaire_ began to thresh madly astern.
+
+Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An
+ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no
+ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing
+propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one
+stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed,
+in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in
+the direction the fugitive had taken.
+
+For a little time he did not see her, then he glimpsed the white of a
+pique dress, and with a yell of admonition started in pursuit.
+
+She stood hesitating a moment, then fled, but he was on her before she
+had gone a dozen yards; the counterpane was flung over her head, and
+though she kicked and struggled and indulged in muffled squeaks, he
+lifted her up in his arms and staggered back to the boat.
+
+They ran out a gangway plank and across this he passed with his burden,
+declining all offers of assistance.
+
+"Close the window," he gasped; "open the door--now, you naughty old
+lady!"
+
+He bundled her in, counterpane enmeshed and reduced to helpless silence,
+slammed the door and leant panting against the cabin, mopping his brow.
+
+"Phew!" said Bones, and repeated the inelegant remark many times. All
+this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and
+Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important young man who saluted
+them.
+
+"All correct, sir," said Bones, stiff as a ramrod; "no
+casualties--except as per my nose which will be noted in the margin of
+my report--one female prisoner secured after heroic chase, which, I
+trust, sir, you will duly report to my jolly old superiors----"
+
+"Don't gas so much, Bones," said Hamilton. "Come along and meet my
+sister--hullo, what the devil's that?"
+
+They turned with one accord to the forest path.
+
+Two native policemen were coming towards them, and between them a
+bedraggled M'lama, her skirt all awry, her fine hat at a rakish angle,
+stepped defiantly.
+
+"Heavens!" said Bones, "she's got away again.... That's my prisoner,
+dear old officer!"
+
+Hamilton frowned.
+
+"I hope she hasn't frightened Pat ... she was walking in the
+reservation."
+
+Bones did not faint, his knees went from under him, but he recovered by
+clutching the arm of his faithful Ali.
+
+"Dear old friend," he murmured brokenly, "accidents ... error of
+judgment ... the greatest tragedy of my life...."
+
+"What's the matter with you?" demanded Sanders in alarm, for the face of
+Bones was ghastly.
+
+Lieutenant Tibbetts made no reply, but walked with unsteady steps to the
+lock-up, fumbled with the key and opened the door.
+
+There stepped forth a dishevelled and wrathful girl (she was a little
+scared, too, I suspect), the most radiant and lovely figure that had
+ever dawned upon the horizon of Bones.
+
+She looked from her staggered brother to Sanders, from Sanders to her
+miserable custodian.
+
+"What on earth----" began Hamilton.
+
+Then her lips twitched and she fell into a fit of uncontrollable
+laughter.
+
+"If," said Bones huskily, "if in an excess of zeal I mistook... in the
+gloamin', madame ... white dress...."
+
+He spread out his arms in a gesture of extravagant despair.
+
+"I can do no more than a gentleman.... I have a loaded revolver in my
+cabin ... farewell!"
+
+He bowed deeply to the girl, saluted his dumbfounded chief, tripped up
+over a bucket and would have fallen but for Hamilton's hand.
+
+"You're an ass," said Hamilton, struggling to preserve his sense of
+annoyance. "Pat--this is Lieutenant Tibbetts, of whom I have often
+written."
+
+The girl looked at Bones, her eyes moist with laughter.
+
+"I guessed it from the first," she said, and Bones writhed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION
+
+
+Captain Hamilton of the King's Houssas had two responsibilities in life,
+a sister and a subaltern.
+
+The sister's name was Patricia Agatha, the subaltern had been born
+Tibbetts, christened Augustus, and named by Hamilton in his arbitrary
+way, "Bones."
+
+Whilst sister and subaltern were separated from one another by some
+three thousand miles of ocean--as far, in fact, as the Coast is from
+Bradlesham Thorpe in the County of Hampshire--Captain Hamilton bore his
+responsibilities without displaying a sense of the burden.
+
+When Patricia Hamilton decided on paying a visit to her brother she did
+so with his heartiest approval, for he did not realize that in bringing
+his two responsibilities face to face he was not only laying the
+foundation of serious trouble, but was actually engaged in erecting the
+fabric.
+
+Pat Hamilton had come and had been boisterously welcomed by her brother
+one white-hot morning, Houssas in undress uniform lining the beach and
+gazing solemnly upon Militini's riotous joy. Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
+C.M.G., had given her a more formal welcome, for he was a little scared
+of women. Bones, as we know, had not been present--which was unfortunate
+in more ways than one.
+
+It made matters no easier for the wretched Bones that Miss Hamilton was
+an exceedingly lovely lady. Men who live for a long time in native lands
+and see little save beautiful figures displayed without art and with
+very little adornment, are apt to regard any white woman with regular
+features as pretty, when the vision comes to them after a long interval
+spent amidst native people. But it needed neither contrast nor
+comparison to induce an admiration for Captain Hamilton's sister.
+
+She was of a certain Celtic type, above the medium height, with the
+freedom of carriage and gait which is the peculiar possession of her
+country-women. Her face was a true oval, and her complexion of that kind
+which tans readily but does not freckle.
+
+Eyes and mouth were firm and steadfast; she was made for ready laughter,
+yet she was deep enough, and in eyes and mouth alike you read a
+tenderness beyond disguise. She had a trinity of admirers: her brother's
+admiration was natural and critical; Sanders admired and feared;
+Lieutenant Tibbetts admired and resented.
+
+From the moment when Bones strode off after the painful discovery, had
+slammed the door of his hut and had steadfastly declined all manner of
+food and sustenance, he had voluntarily cut himself off from his kind.
+
+He met Hamilton on parade the following morning, hollow-eyed (as he
+hoped) after a sleepless night, and there was nothing in his attitude
+suggestive of the deepest respect and the profoundest regard for that
+paragraph of King's Regulations which imposes upon the junior officer a
+becoming attitude of humility in the presence of his superior officer.
+
+"How is your head, Bones?" asked Hamilton, after the parade had been
+dismissed.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Bones bitterly--though why he should be bitter at
+the kindly inquiry only he knew--"thank you, sir, it is about the same.
+My temperature is--or was--up to one hundred and four, and I have been
+delirious. I wouldn't like to say, dear old--sir, that I'm not nearly
+delirious now."
+
+"Come up to tiffin," invited Hamilton.
+
+Bones saluted--a sure preliminary to a dramatic oration.
+
+"Sir," he said firmly, "you've always been a jolly old officer to me
+before this contretemps wrecked my young life--but I shall never be
+quite the same man again, sir."
+
+"Don't be an ass," begged Hamilton.
+
+"Revile me, sir," said Bones dismally; "give me a dangerous mission, one
+of those jolly old adventures where a feller takes his life in one
+hand, his revolver in the other, but don't ask me----"
+
+"My sister wants to see you," said Hamilton, cutting short the flow of
+eloquence.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Bones hollowly, and strode into his hut.
+
+"And what I'm going to do with him, Heaven knows," groaned Hamilton at
+tiffin. "The fact is, Pat, your arrival on the scene has thoroughly
+demoralized him."
+
+The girl folded her serviette and walked to the window, and stood
+looking out over the yellow stretch of the deserted parade-ground.
+
+"I'm going to call on Bones," she said suddenly.
+
+"Poor Bones!" murmured Sanders.
+
+"That's very rude!" She took down her solar helmet from the peg behind
+the door and adjusted it carefully. Then she stepped through the open
+door, whistling cheerfully.
+
+"I hope you don't mind, sir," apologized Hamilton, "but we've never
+succeeded in stopping her habit of whistling."
+
+Sanders laughed.
+
+"It would be strange if she didn't whistle," he said cryptically.
+
+Bones was lying on his back, his hands behind his head. A half-emptied
+tin of biscuits, no less than the remnants of a box of chocolates,
+indicated that anchorite as he was determined to be, his austerity did
+not run in the direction of starvation.
+
+His mind was greatly occupied by a cinematograph procession of
+melancholy pictures. Perhaps he would go away, far, far, into the
+interior. Even into the territory of the great king where a man's life
+is worth about five cents net. And as day by day passed and no news came
+of him--as how could it when his habitation was marked by a cairn of
+stones?--she would grow anxious and unhappy. And presently messengers
+would come bringing her a few poor trinkets he had bequeathed to her--a
+wrist-watch, a broken sword, a silver cigarette-case dented with the
+arrow that slew him--and she would weep silently in the loneliness of
+her room.
+
+And perhaps he would find strength to send a few scrawled words asking
+for her pardon, and the tears would well up in her beautiful grey
+eyes--as they were already welling in Bones's eyes at the picture he
+drew--and she would know--all.
+
+"Phweet!"
+
+Or else, maybe he would be stricken down with fever, and she would want
+to come and nurse him, but he would refuse.
+
+"Tell her," he would say weakly, but oh, so bravely, "tell her ... I ask
+only ... her pardon."
+
+"Phweet!"
+
+Bones heard the second whistle. It came from the open window immediately
+above his head. A song bird was a rare visitor to these parts, but he
+was too lazy and too absorbed to look up.
+
+Perhaps (he resumed) she would never see him again, never know the deep
+sense of injustice....
+
+"Phwee--et!"
+
+It was clearer and more emphatic, and he half turned his head to
+look----
+
+He was on his feet in a second, his hand raised to his damp forehead,
+for leaning on the window sill, her lips pursed for yet another whistle,
+was the lady of his thoughts.
+
+She met his eyes sternly.
+
+"Come outside--misery!" she said, and Bones gasped and obeyed.
+
+"What do you mean," she demanded, "by sulking in your wretched little
+hut when you ought to be crawling about on your hands and knees begging
+my pardon?"
+
+Bones said nothing.
+
+"Bones," said this outrageous girl, shaking her head reprovingly, "you
+want a jolly good slapping!"
+
+Bones extended his bony wrist.
+
+"Slap!" he said defiantly.
+
+He had hardly issued the challenge when a very firm young palm, driven
+by an arm toughened by a long acquaintance with the royal and ancient
+game, came "Smack!" and Bones winced.
+
+"Play the game, dear old Miss Hamilton," he said, rubbing his wrist.
+
+"Play the game yourself, dear old Bones," she mimicked him. "You ought
+to be ashamed of yourself----"
+
+"Let bygones be bygones, jolly old Miss Hamilton," begged Bones
+magnanimously. "And now that I see you're a sport, put it there, if it
+weighs a ton."
+
+And he held out his nobbly hand and caught the girl's in a grip that
+made her grimace.
+
+Five minutes later he was walking her round the married quarters of his
+Houssas, telling her the story of his earliest love affair. She was an
+excellent listener, and seldom interrupted him save to ask if there was
+any insanity in his family, or whether the girl was short-sighted; in
+fact, as Bones afterwards said, it might have been Hamilton himself.
+
+"What on earth are they finding to talk about?" wondered Sanders,
+watching the confidences from the depths of a big cane chair on the
+verandah.
+
+"Bones," replied Hamilton lazily, "is telling her the story of his life
+and how he saved the territories from rebellion. He's also begging her
+not to breathe a word of this to me for fear of hurting my feelings."
+
+At that precise moment Bones was winding up a most immodest recital of
+his accomplishments with a less immodest footnote.
+
+"Of course, dear old Miss Hamilton," he was saying, lowering his voice,
+"I shouldn't like a word of this to come to your jolly old brother's
+ears. He's an awfully good sort, but naturally in competition with an
+agile mind like mine, understanding the native as I do, he hasn't an
+earthly----"
+
+"Why don't you write the story of your adventures?" she asked
+innocently. "It would sell like hot cakes."
+
+Bones choked with gratification.
+
+"Precisely my idea--oh, what a mind you've got! What a pity it doesn't
+run in the family! I'll tell you a precious secret--not a word to
+anybody--honest?"
+
+"Honest," she affirmed.
+
+Bones looked round.
+
+"It's practically ready for the publisher," he whispered, and stepped
+back to observe the effect of his words.
+
+She shook her head in admiration, her eyes were dancing with delight,
+and Bones realized that here at last he had met a kindred soul.
+
+"It must be awfully interesting to write books," she sighed. "I've
+tried--but I can never invent anything."
+
+"Of course, in my case----" corrected Bones.
+
+"I suppose you just sit down with a pen in your hand and imagine all
+sorts of things," she mused, directing her feet to the Residency.
+
+"This is the story of my life," explained Bones earnestly. "Not
+fiction ... but all sorts of adventures that actually happened."
+
+"To whom?" she asked.
+
+"To me," claimed Bones, louder than was necessary.
+
+"Oh!" she said.
+
+"Don't start 'Oh-ing,'" said Bones in a huff. "If you and I are going to
+be good friends, dear old Miss Hamilton, don't say 'Oh!'"
+
+"Don't be a bully, Bones." She turned on him so fiercely that he shrank
+back.
+
+"Play the game," he said feebly; "play the game, dear old sister!"
+
+She led him captive to the stoep and deposited him in the easiest chair
+she could find.
+
+From that day he ceased to be anything but a slave, except on one point.
+
+The question of missions came up at tiffin, and Miss Hamilton revealed
+the fact that she favoured the High Church and held definite views on
+the clergy.
+
+Bones confessed that he was a Wesleyan.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you're a Nonconformist?" she asked
+incredulously.
+
+"That's my dinky little religion, dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones.
+"I'd have gone into the Church only I hadn't enough--enough----"
+
+"Brains?" suggested Hamilton.
+
+"Call is the word," said Bones. "I wasn't called--or if I was I was
+out--haw-haw! That's a rippin' little bit of persiflage, Miss Hamilton?"
+
+"Be serious, Bones," said the girl; "you mustn't joke about things."
+
+She put him through a cross-examination to discover the extent of his
+convictions. In self-defence Bones, with only the haziest idea of the
+doctrine he defended, summarily dismissed certain of Miss Hamilton's
+most precious beliefs.
+
+"But, Bones," she persisted, "if I asked you to change----"
+
+Bones shook his head.
+
+"Dear old friend," he said solemnly, "there are two things I'll never
+do--alter the faith of my distant but happy youth, or listen to one
+disparagin' word about the jolliest old sister that ever----"
+
+"That will do, Bones," she said, with dignity. "I can see that you don't
+like me as I thought you did--what do you think, Mr. Sanders?"
+
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"I can hardly judge--you see," he added apologetically, "I'm a Wesleyan
+too."
+
+"Oh!" said Patricia, and fled in confusion.
+
+Bones rose in silence, crossed to his chief and held out his hand.
+
+"Brother," he said brokenly.
+
+"What the devil are you doing?" snarled Sanders.
+
+"Spoken like a true Christian, dear old Excellency and sir," murmured
+Bones. "We'll bring her back to the fold."
+
+He stepped nimbly to the door, and the serviette ring that Sanders threw
+with unerring aim caught his angular shoulder as he vanished.
+
+That same night Sanders had joyful news to impart. He came into the
+Residency to find Bones engaged in mastering the art of embroidery under
+the girl's tuition.
+
+Sanders interrupted what promised to be a most artistic execution.
+
+"Who says a joy-ride to the upper waters of the Isisi?"
+
+Hamilton jumped up.
+
+"Joy-ride?" he said, puzzled.
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"We leave to-morrow for the Lesser Isisi to settle a religious
+palaver--Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is getting a little too
+enthusiastic a Christian, and Ahmet has been sending some queer reports.
+I've been putting off the palaver for weeks, but Administration says it
+has no objection to my making a picnic of duty--so we'll all go."
+
+"Tri-umph!" said Hamilton. "Bones, leave your needlework and go overhaul
+the stores."
+
+Bones, kneeling on a chair, his elbows on the table, looked up.
+
+"As jolly old Francis Drake said when the Spanish Armada----"
+
+"To the stores, you insubordinate beggar!" commanded Hamilton, and Bones
+made a hurried exit.
+
+The accommodation of the _Zaire_ was limited, but there was the launch,
+a light-draught boat which was seldom used except for tributary work.
+
+"I could put Bones in charge of the _Wiggle_," he said, "but he'd be
+pretty sure to smash her up. Miss Hamilton will have my cabin, and you
+and I could take the two smaller cabins."
+
+Bones, to whom it was put, leapt at the suggestion, brushing aside all
+objections. They were answered before they were framed.
+
+As for the girl, she was beside herself with joy.
+
+"Will there be any fighting?" she asked breathlessly. "Shall we be
+attacked?"
+
+Sanders shook his head smilingly.
+
+"All you have to do," said Bones confidently, "is to stick to me. Put
+your faith in old Bones. When you see the battle swayin' an' it isn't
+certain which way it's goin', look for my jolly old banner wavin' above
+the stricken field."
+
+"And be sure it _is_ his banner," interrupted Hamilton, "and not his
+large feet. Now the last time we had a fight...."
+
+And he proceeded to publish and utter a scandalous libel, Bones
+protesting incoherently the while.
+
+The expedition was on the point of starting when Hamilton took his
+junior aside.
+
+"Bones," he said, not unkindly, "I know you're a whale of a navigator,
+and all that sort of thing, and my sister, who has an awfully keen sense
+of humour, would dearly love to see you at the helm of the _Wiggle_, but
+as the Commissioner wants to make a holiday, I think it would be best if
+you left the steering to one of the boys."
+
+Bones drew himself up stiffly.
+
+"Dear old officer," he said aggrieved, "I cannot think that you wish to
+speak disparagingly of my intelligence----"
+
+"Get that silly idea out of your head," said Hamilton. "That is just
+what I'm trying to do."
+
+"I'm under your jolly old orders, sir," Bones said with the air of an
+early Christian martyr, "and according to Paragraph 156 of King's
+Regulations----"
+
+"Don't let us go into that," said Hamilton. "I'm not giving you any
+commands, I'm merely making a sensible suggestion. Of course, if you
+want to make an ass of yourself----"
+
+"I have never had the slightest inclination that way, cheery old sir,"
+said Bones, "and I'm not likely at my time of life to be influenced by
+my surroundings."
+
+He saluted again and made his way to the barracks. Bones had a
+difficulty in packing his stores. In truth they had all been packed
+before he reached the _Wiggle_, and to an unprofessional eye they were
+packed very well indeed, but Bones had them turned out and packed _his_
+way. When that was done, and it was obvious to the meanest intelligence
+that the _Wiggle_ was in terrible danger of capsizing before she
+started, the stores were unshipped and rearranged under the directions
+of the fuming Hamilton.
+
+When the third packing was completed, the general effect bore a
+striking resemblance to the position of the stores as Bones had found
+them when he came to the boat. When everybody was ready to start, Bones
+remembered that he had forgotten his log-book, and there was another
+wait.
+
+"Have you got everything now?" asked Sanders wearily, leaning over the
+rail.
+
+"Everything, sir," said Bones, with a salute to his superior, and a
+smile to the girl.
+
+"Have you got your hot-water bottle and your hair-curlers?" demanded
+Hamilton offensively.
+
+Bones favoured him with a dignified stare, made a signal to the
+engineer, and the _Wiggle_ started forward, as was her wont, with a jerk
+which put upon Bones the alternative of making a most undignified sprawl
+or clutching a very hot smoke-stack. He chose the latter, recovered his
+balance with an easy grace, punctiliously saluted the tiny flag of the
+_Zaire_ as he whizzed past her, and under the very eyes of Hamilton,
+with all the calmness in the world, took the wheel from the steersman's
+hand and ran the _Wiggle_ ashore.
+
+All this he did in the brief space of three minutes.
+
+"And," said Hamilton, exasperated to a degree, "if you'd only broken
+your infernal head, the accident would have been worth it."
+
+It took half an hour for the _Wiggle_ to get afloat again. She had run
+up the beach, and it was necessary to unload the stores, carry them back
+to the quay and reload her again.
+
+"_Now_ are you ready?" said Sanders.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said Bones, abased but nautical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bucongo, the chief of the Lesser Isisi folk, had a dispute with his
+brother-in-law touching a certain matter which affected his honour. It
+affected his life eventually, since his relative was found one morning
+dead of a spear-thrust. This Sanders discovered after the big trial
+which followed certain events described hereafter.
+
+The brother-in-law in his malice had sworn that Bucongo held communion
+with devils. It is a fact that Bucongo had, at an early age, been
+captured by Catholic missionaries, and had spent an uncomfortable youth
+mastering certain mysterious rites and ceremonies. His brother-in-law
+had been in the blessed service of another missionary who taught that
+God lived in the river, and that to fully benefit by his ju-ju it was
+necessary to be immersed in the flowing stream.
+
+Between the water-God men and the cross-God men there was ever a feud,
+each speaking disparagingly of the other, though converts to each creed
+had this in common, that neither understood completely the faith into
+which they were newly admitted. The advantage lay with the Catholic
+converts because they were given a pewter medal with hearts and sunlike
+radiations engraved thereon (this medal was admittedly a cure for
+toothache and pains in the stomach), whilst the Protestants had little
+beyond a mysterious something that they referred to as A'lamo--which
+means Grace.
+
+But when taunted by their medal-flaunting rivals and challenged to
+produce this "Grace," they were crestfallen and ashamed, being obliged
+to admit that A'lamo was an invisible magic which (they stoutly
+affirmed) was nevertheless an excellent magic, since it preserved one
+from drowning and cured warts and boils.
+
+Bucongo, the most vigorous partisan of the cross-God men, and an
+innovator of ritual, found amusement in watching the Baptist
+missionaries standing knee-deep in the river washing the souls of the
+converts.
+
+He had even been insolent to young Ferguson, the earnest leader of the
+American Baptist Mission, and to his intense amazement had been suddenly
+floored with a left-hander delivered by the sometime Harvard middle
+weight.
+
+He carried his grievance and a lump on his jaw to Mr. Commissioner
+Sanders, who had arrived at the junction of the Isisi and the N'gomi
+rivers and was holding his palaver, and Sanders had been unsympathetic.
+
+"Go worship your God in peace," said Sanders, "and let all other men
+worship theirs; and say no evil word to white men for these are very
+quick to anger. Also it is unbecoming that a black man should speak
+scornfully to his masters."
+
+"Lord," said Bucongo, "in heaven all men are as one, black or white."
+
+"In heaven," said Sanders, "we will settle that palaver, but here on the
+river we hold our places by our merits. To-morrow I come to your village
+to inquire into certain practices of which the God-men know
+nothing--this palaver is finished."
+
+Now Bucongo was something more than a convert. He was a man of singular
+intelligence and of surprising originality. He had been a lay missioner
+of the Church, and had made many converts to a curious religion, the
+ritual of which was only half revealed to the good Jesuit fathers when
+at a great palaver which Bucongo summoned to exhibit his converts, the
+Church service was interspersed with the sacrifice of a goat and a weird
+procession and dance which left the representative of The Order
+speechless. Bucongo was called before a conference of the Mission and
+reprimanded.
+
+He offered excuses, but there was sufficient evidence to prove that this
+enthusiastic Christian had gone systematically to work, to found what
+amounted to a religion of his own.
+
+The position was a little delicate, and any other Order than the Jesuits
+might have hesitated to tackle a reform which meant losing a very large
+membership.
+
+The fate of Bucongo's congregation had been decided when, in his anger,
+he took canoe, and travelling for half a day, came to the principal
+Mission.
+
+Father Carpentier, full-bearded, red of face and brawny of arm, listened
+in the shade of his hut, pulling thoughtfully at a long pipe.
+
+"And so, Pentini," concluded Bucongo, "even Sandi puts shame upon me
+because I am a cross-God man, and he by all accounts is of the water-God
+ju-ju."
+
+The father eyed this perturbed sheep of his flock thoughtfully.
+
+"O Bucongo," he said gently, "in the river lands are many beasts. Those
+which fly and which swim; those that run swiftly and that hide in the
+earth. Now who of these is right?"
+
+"Lord, they are all right but are of different ways," said Bucongo.
+
+Father Carpentier nodded.
+
+"Also in the forest are two ants--one who lives in tree nests, and one
+who has a home deep in the ground. They are of a kind, and have the same
+business. Yet God put it into the little heads of one to climb trees,
+and of the other to burrow deeply. Both are right and neither are wrong,
+save when the tree ant meets the ground ant and fights him. Then both
+are wrong."
+
+The squatting Bucongo rose sullenly.
+
+"Master," he said, "these mysteries are too much for a poor man. I think
+I know a better ju-ju, and to him I go."
+
+"You have no long journey, Chief," said the father sternly, "for they
+tell me stories of ghost dances in the forest and a certain Bucongo who
+is the leader of these--and of a human sacrifice. Also of converts who
+are branded with a cross of hot iron."
+
+The chief looked at his sometime tutor with face twisted and puckered
+with rage, and turning without a word, walked back to his canoe.
+
+The next morning Father Carpentier sent a messenger to Sanders bearing
+an urgent letter, and Sanders read the closely written lines with a
+troubled frown.
+
+He put down the letter and came out on to the deck, to find Hamilton
+fishing over the side of the steamer. Hamilton looked round.
+
+"Anything wrong?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is wrong," said Sanders. "I have heard of
+his religious meetings and have been a little worried--there will be a
+big ju-ju palaver or I'm very much mistaken. Where is Bones?"
+
+"He has taken my sister up the creek--Bones says there are any number of
+egrets' nests there, and I believe he is right."
+
+Sanders frowned again.
+
+"Send a canoe to fetch him back," he said. "That is Bucongo's territory,
+and I don't trust the devil."
+
+"Which one--Bones or Bucongo?" asked Hamilton innocently.
+
+But Sanders was not feeling humorous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that precise moment Bones was sitting before the most fantastic
+religious assembly that ecclesiastic or layman had ever attended.
+
+Fate and Bones had led the girl through a very pleasant forest
+glade--they left the light-draught _Wiggle_ half a mile down stream
+owing to the shoals which barred their progress, and had come upon
+Bucongo in an exalted moment.
+
+With the assurance that he was doing no more than intrude upon one of
+those meetings which the missionizing Chief of the Lesser Isisi so
+frequently held, Bones stood on the outer fringe of the circle which sat
+in silence to watch an unwilling novitiate getting acquainted with
+Bucongo's god.
+
+The novice was a girl, and she lay before an altar of stones surmounted
+by a misshapen _beti_ who glared with his one eye upon the devout
+gathering. The novice lay rigid, for the excellent reason that she was
+roped foot and hands to two pegs in the ground.
+
+Before the altar itself was a fire of wood in which two irons were
+heating.
+
+Bones did not take this in for a moment, for he was gazing open-mouthed
+at Bucongo. On his head was an indubitable mitre, but around the mitre
+was bound a strip of skin from which was suspended a circle of dangling
+monkey tails. For cope he wore a leopard's robe. His face was streaked
+red with camwood, and around his eyes he had painted two white circles.
+
+He was in the midst of a frenzied address when the two white visitors
+came upon the scene, and his hand was outstretched to take the red
+branding-iron when the girl at Bones's side, with a little gasp of
+horror, broke into the circle, and wrenching the rough iron from the
+attendant's hand, flung it towards the circle of spectators, which
+widened in consequence.
+
+"How dare you--how dare you!" she demanded breathlessly, "you
+horrible-looking man!"
+
+Bucongo glared at her but said nothing; then he turned to meet Bones.
+
+In that second of time Bucongo had to make a great decision, and to
+overcome the habits of a lifetime. Training and education to the
+dominion of the white man half raised his hand to the salute; something
+that boiled and bubbled madly and set his shallow brain afire, something
+that was of his ancestry, wild, unreasoning, brutish, urged other
+action. Bones had his revolver half drawn when the knobbly end of the
+chief's killing-spear struck him between the eyes, and he went down on
+his knees.
+
+Thus it came about, that he found himself sitting before Bucongo, his
+feet and hands tied with native grass, with the girl at his side in no
+better case.
+
+She was very frightened, but this she did not show. She had the
+disadvantage of being unable to understand the light flow of offensive
+badinage which passed between her captor and Bones.
+
+"O Tibbetti," said Bucongo, "you see me as a god--I have finished with
+all white men."
+
+"Soon we shall finish with you, Bucongo," said Bones.
+
+"I cannot die, Tibbetti," said the other with easy confidence, "that is
+the wonderful thing."
+
+"Other men have said that," said Bones in the vernacular, "and their
+widows are wives again and have forgotten their widowhood."
+
+"This is a new ju-ju, Tibbetti," said Bucongo, a strange light in his
+eyes. "I am the greatest of all cross-God men, and it is revealed to me
+that many shall follow me. Now you and the woman shall be the first of
+all white people to bear the mark of Bucongo the Blessed. And in the
+days to be you shall bare your breasts and say, 'Bucongo the Wonderful
+did this with his beautiful hands.'"
+
+Bones was in a cold sweat and his mouth was dry. He scarcely dare look
+at the girl by his side.
+
+"What does he say?" she asked in a low voice. Bones hesitated, and then
+haltingly he stammered the translation of the threat.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"O Bucongo," said Bones, with a sudden inspiration, "though you do evil,
+I will endure. But this you shall do and serve me. Brand me alone upon
+the chest, and upon the back. For if we be branded separately we are
+bound to one another, and you see how ugly this woman is with her thin
+nose and her pale eyes; also she has long hair like the grass which the
+weaver birds use for their nests."
+
+He spoke loudly, eagerly, and it seemed convincingly, for Bucongo was in
+doubt. Truly the woman by all standards was very ugly. Her face was
+white and her lips thin. She was a narrow woman too, he thought, like
+one underfed.
+
+"This you shall do for me, Bucongo," urged Bones; "for gods do not do
+evil things, and it would be bad to marry me to this ugly woman who has
+no hips and has an evil tongue."
+
+Bucongo was undecided.
+
+"A god may do no evil," he said; "but I do not know the ways of white
+men. If it be true, then I will mark you twice, Tibbetti, and you shall
+be my man for ever; and the woman I will not touch."
+
+"Cheer oh!" said Bones.
+
+"What are you saying--will he let us go?" asked the girl.
+
+"I was sayin' what a jolly row there'll be," lied Bones; "and he was
+sayin' that he couldn't think of hurtin' a charmin' lady like you. Shut
+your eyes, dear old Miss Hamilton."
+
+She shut them quickly, half fainting with terror, for Bucongo was coming
+towards them, a blazing iron in his hand, a smile of simple benevolence
+upon his not unintelligent face.
+
+"This shall come as a blessing to you, Tibbetti," he said almost
+jovially.
+
+Bones shut his teeth and waited.
+
+The hot iron was scorching his silk shirt when a voice hailed the
+high-priest of the newest of cults.
+
+"O Bucongo," it said.
+
+Bucongo turned with a grimace of fear and cringed backward before the
+levelled Colt of Mr. Commissioner Sanders.
+
+"Tell me now," said Sanders in his even tone, "can such a man as you
+die? Think, Bucongo."
+
+"Lord," said Bucongo huskily, "I think I can die."
+
+"We shall see," said Sanders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not until after dinner that night that the girl had recovered
+sufficiently to discuss her exciting morning.
+
+"I think you were an awful brute," she addressed her unabashed brother.
+"You were standing in the wood listening to and seeing everything, and
+never came till the last minute."
+
+"It was my fault," interrupted Sanders. "I wanted to see how far the
+gentle Bucongo would go."
+
+"Dooced thoughtless," murmured Bones under his breath, but audible.
+
+She looked at him long and earnestly then turned again to her brother.
+
+"There is one thing I want to know," she said. "What was Bones saying
+when he talked to that horrible man? Do you know that Bones was
+scowling at me as though I was ... I hardly know how to express it. Was
+he saying nice things?"
+
+Hamilton looked up at the awning, and cleared his throat.
+
+"Play the game, dear old sir and brother-officer," croaked Bones.
+
+"He said----" began Hamilton.
+
+"Live an' let live," pleaded Bones, all of a twitter. "_Esprit de corps_
+an' discretion, jolly old captain."
+
+Hamilton looked at his subordinate steadily.
+
+"He asked to be branded twice in order that you might not be branded
+once," he said quietly.
+
+The girl stared at Bones, and her eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Oh, Bones!" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you ... you
+are a sportsman."
+
+"Carry on," said Bones incoherently, and wept a little at the
+realization of that magnificent moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MAKER OF STORMS
+
+
+Everybody knows that water drawn from rivers is very bad water, for the
+rivers are the Roads of the Dead, and in the middle of those nights when
+the merest rind of a moon shows, and this slither of light and two
+watchful stars form a triangle pointing to the earth, the spirits rise
+from their graves and walk, "singing deadly songs," towards the lower
+star which is the source of all rivers. If you should be--which God
+forbid--on one of those lonely island graveyards on such nights you will
+see strange sights.
+
+The broken cooking-pots which rest on the mounds and the rent linen
+which flutters from little sticks stuck about the graves, grow whole and
+new again. The pots are red and hot as they come from the fire, and the
+pitiful cloths take on the sheen of youth and fold themselves about
+invisible forms. None may see the dead, though it is said that you may
+see the babies.
+
+These the wise men have watched playing at the water's edge, crowing and
+chuckling in the universal language of their kind, staggering groggily
+along the shelving beach with outspread arms balancing their uncertain
+steps. On such nights when M'sa beckons the dead world to the source of
+all rivers, the middle islands are crowded with babies--the dead babies
+of a thousand years. Their spirits come up from the unfathomed deeps of
+the great river and call their mortality from graves.
+
+"How may the waters of the river be acceptable?" asks the shuddering
+N'gombi mother.
+
+Therefore the N'gombi gather their water from the skies in strange
+cisterns of wicker, lined with the leaf of a certain plant which is
+impervious, and even carry their drinking supplies with them when they
+visit the river itself.
+
+There was a certain month in the year, which will be remembered by all
+who attempted the crossing of the Kasai Forest to the south of the
+N'gombi country, when pools and rivulets suddenly dried--so suddenly,
+indeed, that even the crocodiles, who have an instinct for coming
+drought, were left high and dry, in some cases miles from the nearest
+water, and when the sun rose in a sky unflecked by cloud and gave place
+at nights to a sky so brilliant and so menacing in their fierce and
+fiery nearness that men went mad.
+
+Toward the end of this month, when an exasperating full moon advertised
+a continuance of the dry spell by its very whiteness, the Chief
+Koosoogolaba-Muchini, or, as he was called, Muchini, summoned a council
+of his elder men, and they came with parched throats and fear of death.
+
+"All men know," said Muchini, "what sorrow has come to us, for there is
+a more powerful ju-ju in the land than I remember. He has made M'shimba
+M'shamba afraid so that he has gone away and walks no more in the forest
+with his terrible lightning. Also K'li, the father of pools, has gone
+into the earth and all his little children, and I think we shall die,
+every one of us."
+
+There was a skinny old man, with a frame like a dried goatskin, who made
+a snuffling noise when he spoke.
+
+"O Muchini," he said, "when I was a young man there was a way to bring
+M'shimba M'shamba which was most wonderful. In those days we took a
+young maiden and hung her upon a tree----"
+
+"Those old ways were good," interrupted Muchini; "but I tell you,
+M'bonia, that we can follow no more the old ways since Sandi came to the
+land, for he is a cruel man and hanged my own mother's brother for that
+fine way of yours. Yet we cannot sit and die because of certain magic
+which the Stone Breaker is practising."
+
+Now Bula Matadi ("The Stone Breaker") was in those days the mortal enemy
+of the N'gombi people, who were wont to ascribe all their misfortunes to
+his machinations. To Bula Matadi (which was the generic name by which
+the Government of the Congo Free State was known) was traceable the
+malign perversity of game, the blight of crops, the depredations of
+weaver birds. Bula Matadi encouraged leopards to attack isolated
+travellers, and would on great occasions change the seasons of the year
+that the N'gombi's gardens might come to ruin.
+
+"It is known from one end of the earth to the other that I am a most
+cunning man," Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick of
+self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence; "and whilst even the
+old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini, the son of the terrible and
+crafty G'sombo, the brother of Eleni-N'gombi, I went abroad with my wise
+men and my spies and sought out devils and ghosts in places where even
+the bravest have never been," he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper,
+"to the Ewa-Ewa Mongo, the Very Place of Death."
+
+The gasp of horror from his audience was very satisfying to this little
+chief of the Inner N'gombi, and here was a moment suitable for his
+climax.
+
+"And behold!" he cried.
+
+By his side was something covered with a piece of native cloth. This
+covering he removed with a flourish and revealed a small yellow box.
+
+It was most certainly no native manufacture, for its angles were clamped
+with neat brass corner-pieces set flush in the polished wood.
+
+The squatting councillors watched their lord as with easy familiarity he
+opened the lid.
+
+There were twenty tiny compartments, and in each was a slender glass
+tube, corked and heavily sealed, whilst about the neck of each tube was
+a small white label covered with certain devil marks.
+
+Muchini waited until the sensation he had prepared had had its full
+effect.
+
+"By the Great River which runs to the Allamdani,"[1] he said slowly and
+impressively, "were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi to catch
+ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise men, when the moon was calling all
+spirits. They were gathered by the river with little nets and little
+gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught little flies and
+other foolish things and took them to their tent. Then my young men and
+I waited, and when all were gone away we went to their tents and found
+his magic box--which is full of devils of great power--Ro!"
+
+[Footnote 1: This was evidently the Sanga River.]
+
+He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming. Across the starry dome of the
+sky there had flicked a quick flare of light.
+
+There came a sudden uneasy stirring of leaves, a hushed whisper of
+things as though the forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.
+
+Then an icy cold breeze smote his cheek, and staring upward, he saw the
+western stars disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.
+
+"M'shimba M'shamba--he lives!" he roared, and the crash of thunder in
+the forest answered him.
+
+Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was on the furthermost edge of the forest,
+for he was following the impulse of his simple nature and was hunting in
+a country where he had no right to be. The storm (which he cursed,
+having no scruples about river and water, and being wholly sceptical as
+to ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed. Two nights
+later, he sat before the rough hut his men had built, discussing the
+strange ways of the antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened,
+lowering his head till it almost touched the ground.
+
+Clear to his keen ears came the rattle of the distant lokali--the drum
+that sends messages from village to village and from nation to nation.
+
+"O Secundi," said Bosambo, with a note of seriousness in his voice, "I
+have not heard that call for many moons--for it is the war call of the
+N'gombi."
+
+"Lord, it is no war call," said the old man, shifting his feet for
+greater comfort, "yet it is a call which may mean war, for it calls
+spears to a dance, and it is strange, for the N'gombi have no enemies."
+
+"All men are the enemies of the N'gombi," Bosambo quoted a river saying
+as old as the sun.
+
+He listened again, then rose.
+
+"You shall go back and gather me a village of spears, and bring them to
+the borderland near the road that crosses the river," he said.
+
+"On my life," said the other.
+
+Muchini, Chief of the Inner N'gombi, a most inflated man and a familiar
+of magical spirits, gathered his spears to some purpose, for two days
+later Bosambo met him by his border and the chiefs greeted one another
+between two small armies.
+
+"Which way do you go, Muchini?" asked Bosambo.
+
+Now, between Muchini and the Chief of the Ochori was a grievance dating
+back to the big war, when Bosambo had slain the N'gombi chief of the
+time with his own hands.
+
+"I go to the river to call a palaver of all free men," said Muchini;
+"for I tell you this, Bosambo, that I have found a great magic which
+will make us greater than Sandi, and it has been prophesied that I shall
+be a king over a thousand times a thousand spears. For I have a small
+box which brings even M'shimba to my call."
+
+Bosambo, a head and shoulders taller than the other, waved his hand
+towards the forest path which leads eventually to the Ochori city.
+
+"Here is a fine moment for you, Muchini," he said, "and you shall try
+your great magic on me and upon my young men. For I say that you do not
+go by this way, neither you nor your warriors, since I am the servant of
+Sandi and of his King, and he has sent me here to keep his peace; go
+back to your village, for this is the way to Death."
+
+Muchini glared at his enemy.
+
+"Yet this way I go, Bosambo," he said huskily, and looked over his
+shoulder towards his followers.
+
+Bosambo swung round on one heel, an arm and a leg outstretched in the
+attitude of an athlete who is putting the shot. Muchini threw up his
+wicker shield and pulled back his stabbing-spear, but he was a dead man
+before the weapon was poised.
+
+Thus ended the war, and the N'gombi folk went home, never so much as
+striking a blow for the yellow box which Bosambo claimed for himself as
+his own personal loot.
+
+At the time, Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., was blissfully ignorant
+of the miraculous happenings which have been recorded. He was wholly
+preoccupied by the novelty which the presence of Patricia Hamilton
+offered. Never before had a white woman made her home at the Residency,
+and it changed things a little.
+
+She was at times an embarrassment.
+
+When Fubini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava, despatched five maidens to
+change Sandi's wicked heart--Sanders had sent Fubini to the Village of
+Irons for six months for preaching unauthorized magic--they came, in the
+language of Bones, "doocedly undressed," and Patricia had beaten a
+hurried retreat.
+
+She was sometimes an anxiety, as I have already shown, but was never a
+nuisance. She brought to headquarters an aroma of English spring, a
+clean fragrance that refreshed the heat-jaded Commissioner and her
+brother, but which had no perceptible influence upon Bones.
+
+That young officer called for her one hot morning, and Hamilton,
+sprawling on a big cane chair drawn to the shadiest and breeziest end of
+the verandah, observed that Bones carried a wooden box, a drawing-board,
+a pad of paper, two pencils imperfectly concealed behind his large ear,
+and a water-bottle.
+
+"Shop!" said Hamilton lazily. "Forward, Mr. Bones--what can we do for
+you this morning?"
+
+Bones shaded his eyes and peered into the cool corner.
+
+"Talkin' in your sleep, dear old Commander," he said pleasantly,
+"dreamin' of the dear old days beyond recall."
+
+He struck an attitude and lifted his unmusical voice--
+
+     "When life was gay, heigho!
+     Tum tum te tay, heigho!
+     Oh, tiddly umpty humpty umty do,
+     When life was gay--dear old officer--heigho!"
+
+Patricia Hamilton stepped out to the verandah in alarm.
+
+"Oh, please, don't make that hooting noise," she appealed to her
+brother. "I'm writing----"
+
+"Don't be afraid," said Hamilton, "it was only Bones singing. Do it
+again, Bones, Pat didn't hear you."
+
+Bones stood erect, his hand to his white helmet.
+
+"Come aboard, my lady," he said.
+
+"I won't keep you a minute, Bones," said the girl, and disappeared into
+the house.
+
+"What are you doing this morning?" asked Hamilton, gazing with
+pardonable curiosity at the box and drawing-board.
+
+"Polishin' up my military studies with Miss Hamilton's kind
+assistance--botany and applied science, sir," said Bones briskly. "Field
+fortifications, judgin' distance, strategy, Bomongo grammar, field
+cookery an' tropical medicines."
+
+"What has poor little making-up-company-accounts done?" asked Hamilton,
+and Bones blushed.
+
+"Dear old officer," he begged, "I'll tackle that little job as soon as I
+get back. I tried to do 'em this mornin' an was four dollars out--it's
+the regimental cash account that's wrong. People come in and out helpin'
+themselves, and I positively can't keep track of the money."
+
+"As I'm the only person with the key of the regimental cash-box, I
+suppose you mean----?"
+
+Bones raised his hand.
+
+"I make no accusations, dear old feller--it's a painful subject. We all
+have those jolly old moments of temptation. I tackle the accounts
+to-night, sir. You mustn't forget that I've a temperament. I'm not like
+you dear old wooden-heads----"
+
+"Oh, shut up," said the weary Hamilton. "So long as you're going to do a
+bit of study, it's all right."
+
+"Now, Bones," said Patricia, appearing on the scene, "have you got the
+sandwiches?"
+
+Bones made terrifying and warning grimaces.
+
+"Have you got the board to lay the cloth and the paper to cover it, and
+the chocolates and the cold tea?"
+
+Bones frowned, and jerked his head in an agony of warning.
+
+"Come on, then," said the unconscious betrayer of Lieutenant Tibbetts.
+"Good-bye, dear."
+
+"Why 'good-bye,' dear old Hamilton's sister?" asked Bones.
+
+She looked at him scornfully and led the way.
+
+"Don't forget the field fortifications," called Hamilton after them;
+"they eat nicely between slices of strategy."
+
+The sun was casting long shadows eastward when they returned. They
+had not far to come, for the place they had chosen for their picnic
+was well within the Residency reservation, but Bones had been describing
+on his way back one of the remarkable powers he possessed, namely, his
+ability to drag the truth from reluctant and culpable natives. And every
+time he desired to emphasize the point he would stop, lower all his
+impedimenta to the ground, cluttering up the landscape with picnic-box,
+drawing-board, sketching-blocks and the numerous bunches of wild
+flowers he had culled at her request, and press his argument with
+much palm-punching.
+
+He stopped for the last time on the very edge of the barrack square, put
+down his cargo and proceeded to demolish the doubt she had unwarily
+expressed.
+
+"That's where you've got an altogether erroneous view of me, dear old
+sister," he said triumphantly. "I'm known up an' down the river as the
+one man that you can't deceive. Go up and ask the Bomongo, drop in on
+the Isisi, speak to the Akasava, an' what will they say? They'll say,
+'No, ma'am, there's no flies on jolly old Bones--not on your life,
+Harriet!'"
+
+"Then they would be very impertinent," smiled Pat.
+
+"Ask Sanders (God bless him!). Ask Ham. Ask----" he was going on
+enthusiastically.
+
+"Are you going to camp here, or are you coming in?" she challenged.
+
+Bones gathered up his belongings, never ceasing to talk.
+
+"Fellers like me, dear young friend, make the Empire--paint the whole
+bally thing red, white an' blue--'unhonoured an' unsung, until the
+curtain's rung, the boys that made the Empire and the Navy.'"
+
+"Bones, you promised you wouldn't sing," she said reproachfully; "and,
+besides, you're not in the navy."
+
+"That doesn't affect the argument," protested Bones, and was rapidly
+shedding his equipment in preparation for another discourse, when she
+walked on towards Sanders who had come across the square to meet them.
+
+Bones made a dive at the articles he had dropped, and came prancing (no
+other word describes his erratic run) up to Sanders.
+
+"I've just been telling Miss Hamilton, sir and Excellency, that nobody
+can find things that old Bones--you'll remember, sir, the episode of
+your lost pyjama legs. Who found 'em?"
+
+"You did," said Sanders; "they were sent home in your washing. Talking
+about finding things, read this."
+
+He handed a telegraph form to the young man, and Bones, peering into the
+message until his nose almost touched the paper, read--
+
+     "Very urgent. Clear the line. Administration.
+
+     "To Sanders, Commission River Territories. Message begins. Belgian
+     Congo Government reports from Leopoldville, Bacteriological
+     Expedition carriers raided on edge of your territory by Inner
+     N'gombi people, all stores looted including case of 20 culture
+     tubes. Stop. As all these cultures are of virulent diseases,
+     inoculate Inner N'gombi until intact tubes recovered. Message
+     ends."
+
+Bones read it twice, and his face took on an appearance which indicated
+something between great pain and intense vacancy. It was intended to
+convey to the observer the fact that Bones was thinking deeply and
+rapidly, and that he had banished from his mind all the frivolities of
+life.
+
+"I understand, sir--you wish me to go to the dear old Congo Government
+and apologize--I shall be ready in ten minutes."
+
+"What I really want you to do," said Sanders patiently, "is to take the
+_Wiggle_ up stream and get that box."
+
+"I quite understand, sir," said Bones, nodding his head. "To-day is the
+8th, to-morrow is the 9th--the box shall be in your hands on the 15th by
+half-past seven in the evening, dear old sir."
+
+He saluted and turned a baleful glare upon the girl, the import of which
+she was to learn at first hand.
+
+"Duty, Miss Patricia Hamilton! Forgive poor old Bones if he suddenly
+drops the mask of _dolce far niente_--I go!"
+
+He saluted again and went marching stiffly to his quarters, with all the
+dignity which an empty lunch-box and a dangling water-bottle would allow
+him.
+
+The next morning Bones went forth importantly for the Ochori city, being
+entrusted with the task of holding, so to speak, the right flank of the
+N'gombi country.
+
+"You will use your discretion," Sanders said at parting, "and, of
+course, you must keep your eyes open; if you hear the merest hint that
+the box is in your neighbourhood, get it."
+
+"I think, your Excellency," said Bones, with heavy carelessness, "that
+I have fulfilled missions quite as delicate as this, and as for
+observation, why, the gift runs in my family."
+
+"And runs so fast that you've never caught up with it," growled
+Hamilton.
+
+Bones turned haughtily and saluted. It was a salute full of subdued
+offence.
+
+He went joyously to the northward, evolving cunning plans. He stopped
+at every village to make inquiries and to put the unoffending villagers
+to considerable trouble--for he insisted upon a house-to-house
+search--before, somewhat wearied by his own zeal, he came to the Ochori.
+
+Chief Bosambo heard of his coming and summoned his councillors.
+
+"Truly has Sandi a hundred ears," he said in dismay, "for it seems that
+he has heard of the slaying of Muchini. Now, all men who are true to me
+will swear to the lord Tibbetti that we know nothing of a killing
+palaver, and that we have not been beyond the trees to the land side of
+the city. This you will all say because you love me; and if any man says
+another thing I will beat him until he is sick."
+
+Bones came and was greeted by the chief--and Bosambo was carried to the
+beach on a litter.
+
+"Lord," said Bosambo weakly, "now the sight of your simple face will
+make me a well man again. For, lord, I have not left my bed since the
+coming of the rains, and there is strength neither in my hands and
+feet."
+
+"Poor old bird," said Bones sympathetically, "you've been sittin' in a
+draught."
+
+"This I tell you, Tibbetti," Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his
+ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ
+English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I
+have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing,
+being like a dead man--all this my headman will testify."
+
+Bones's face dropped, for he had hoped to secure information here.
+Bosambo, watching his face through half-closed lids, saw the dismal
+droop of the other's mouth, and came to the conclusion that whatever
+might be the cause of the visit, it was not to hold the Ochori or their
+chief to account for known misdeeds.
+
+"O Bosambo," said Bones, in the river dialect, "this is sad news, for I
+desire that you shall tell me certain things for which Sandi would have
+given you salt and rods."
+
+The Chief of the Ochori sat up in his litter and went so far as to put
+one foot to the ground.
+
+"Lord," said he heartily, "the sound of your lovely voice brings me from
+the grave and gives me strength. Ask, O Bonesi, for you are my father
+and my mother; and though I saw and heard nothing, yet in my sickness I
+had wonderful visions and all things were made visible--that I declare
+to you, Bonesi, before all men."
+
+"Don't call me 'Bonesi,'" said Bones fiercely. "You're a jolly cheeky
+feller, Bosambo--you're very, very naughty, indeed!"
+
+"Master," said Bosambo humbly, "though I rule these Ochori I am a
+foreigner in this land; in the tongue of my own people, Bonesi means
+'he-who-is-noble-in-face-and-a-giver-of-justice.'"
+
+"That's better," nodded the gratified Bones, and went on speaking in the
+dialect. "You shall help me in this--it touches the people of the Inner
+N'gombi----"
+
+Bosambo fell back wearily on to the litter, and rolled his eyes as one
+in pain.
+
+"This is a sorrow for me, Bo--Tibbetti," he said faintly, "but I am a
+sick man."
+
+"Also," continued Bones, "of a certain box of wood, full of poisons----"
+
+As well as he could Bones explained the peculiar properties of germ
+culture.
+
+"Oh, ko!" said Bosambo, closing his eyes, and was to all appearances
+beyond human aid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Lord," said Bosambo, at parting, "you have brought me to life, and
+every man of every tribe shall know that you are a great healer. To all
+the far and quiet places of the forest I will send my young men who will
+cry you aloud as a most wonderful doctor."
+
+"Not at all," murmured Bones modestly, "not at all."
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, this time in English, for he was not to be
+outdone in the matter of languages, for had he not attended a great
+mission school in Monrovia? "Master, you dam' fine feller, you look 'um
+better feller, you no find um. You be same like Moses and Judi Escariot,
+big fine feller, by golly--yas."
+
+All night long, between the visits which Bones had been making from the
+moored _Wiggle_ to the village (feeling the patient's pulse with a
+profound and professional air and prescribing brandy and milk), Bosambo
+had been busy.
+
+"Stand you at the door, Secundi," he said to his headman, "and let one
+of your men go to the shore to warn me of my lord Tibbetti's coming, for
+I have work to do. It seems this Maker of Storms were better with Sandi
+than with me."
+
+"Tibbetti is a fool, I think," suggested Secundi.
+
+Bosambo, kneeling on a rush mat, busy with a native chisel and a pot of
+clay paint, looked up.
+
+"I have beaten older men than you with a stick until they have wept," he
+said, "and all for less than you say. For this is the truth, Secundi,
+that a child cannot be a fool, though an old man may be a shame. This is
+the word of the blessed prophet. As for Tibbetti, he has a clean and
+loving heart."
+
+There was a rustle at the door and a whispered voice.
+
+The box and the tools were thrust under a skin rug and Bosambo again
+became the interesting invalid.
+
+In the morning Bosambo had said farewell, and a blushing Bones listened
+with unconcealed pleasure to the extravagant praise of his patient.
+
+"And this I tell you, Tibbetti," said Bosambo, standing thigh-deep in
+the river by the launch's side, "that knowing you are wise man who
+gathers wisdom, I have sent to the end of my country for some rare and
+beautiful thing that you may carry it with you."
+
+He signalled to a man on the bank, and his servant brought him a curious
+object.
+
+It was, Bones noted, a square box apparently of native make, for it was
+fantastically carved and painted. There were crude heads and hideous
+forms which never were on land or sea. The paint was brilliant; red,
+yellow and green indiscriminately splashed.
+
+"This is very ancient and was brought to my country by certain forest
+people. It is a Maker of Storms, and is a powerful ju-ju for good and
+evil."
+
+Bones, already a collector of native work, was delighted. His delight
+soothed him for his failure in other respects.
+
+He returned to headquarters empty-handed and sat the centre of a
+chilling group--if we except Patricia Hamilton--and endeavoured, as so
+many successful advocates have done, to hide his short-comings behind a
+screen of rhetoric.
+
+He came to the part of his narrative where Bosambo was taken ill without
+creating any notable sensation, save that Sanders's grey eyes narrowed
+a little and he paid greater heed to the rest of the story.
+
+"There was poor old Bosambo knocked out, sir--ab-so-lutely done
+for--fortunately I did not lose my nerve. You know what I am, dear old
+officer, in moments of crisis?"
+
+"I know," said Hamilton grimly, "something between a Welsh revivalist
+and a dancing dervish."
+
+"Please go on, Bones," begged the girl, not the least interested of the
+audience.
+
+"I dashed straight back to the _Wiggle_," said Bones breathlessly,
+"searched for my medicine chest--it wasn't there! Not so much as a
+mustard plaster--what was I to do, dear old Miss Hamilton?" he appealed
+dramatically.
+
+"Don't tell him, Pat," begged Hamilton, "he's sure to guess it."
+
+"What was I to do? I seized a bottle of brandy," said Bones with relish,
+"I dashed back to where Bosambo was lyin'. I dashed into the village,
+into his hut and got a glass----"
+
+"Well, well!" said Sanders impatiently, "what happened after all this
+dashing?"
+
+Bones spread out his hands.
+
+"Bosambo is alive to-day," he said simply, "praisin'--if I may be
+allowed to boast--the name of Bones the Medicine Man. Look here, sir."
+
+He dragged towards him along the floor of the hut a package covered with
+a piece of native sacking. This he whisked away and revealed the
+hideous handiwork of an artist who had carved and painted as true to
+nature as a man may who is not quite certain whether the human eye is
+half-way down the nose or merely an appendage to his ear.
+
+"That, sir," said Bones impressively, "is one of the most interestin'
+specimens of native work I have ever seen: a gift! From Bosambo to the
+jolly old doctor man who dragged him, if I might so express it, from the
+very maws of death."
+
+He made his dramatic pause.
+
+Sanders bent down, took a penknife from his pocket and scraped the paint
+from a flat oblong space on the top.
+
+There for all men to see--save Bones who was now engaged in a relation
+of his further adventure to his one sympathizer--was a brass plate, and
+when the paint had been scraped away, an inscription--
+
+     Department du Médicins, Etat CONGO BELGE.
+
+Sanders and Hamilton gazed, fascinated and paralysed to silence.
+
+"I've always had a feelin' I'd like to be a medicine man." Bones
+prattled on. "You see----"
+
+"One moment, Bones," interrupted Sanders quietly. "Did you open this box
+by any chance?"
+
+"No, sir," said Bones.
+
+"And did you see any of its contents?"
+
+"No, sir," said Bones confidentially, "that's the most interestin' thing
+about the box. It contains magic--which, of course, honoured sir and
+Excellency, is all rubbish."
+
+Sanders took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after a few trials
+opened the case and scrutinized the contents, noting the comforting fact
+that all the tubes were sealed. He heaved a deep sigh of thankfulness.
+
+"You didn't by chance discover anything about the missing cultures,
+Bones?" he asked mildly.
+
+Bones shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and looked disconsolately
+at his chief.
+
+"You think I've been feeble, but I haven't lost hope, sir," he said,
+with fine resolution. "I've got a feelin' that if I were allowed to go
+into the forest, disguised, sir, as a sort of half-witted native chap,
+sir----"
+
+"Disguised!" said Hamilton. "Good Lord, what do you want a disguise
+for?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BONES AND THE WIRELESS
+
+
+Ko-boru, the headman of Bingini, called his relations together for a
+solemn family conference.
+
+The lower river folk play an inconsiderable rôle in the politics of the
+Territories, partly because they are so near to headquarters that there
+is no opportunity for any of those secret preparations which precede all
+native intrigues, great or small, and partly because the lower river
+people are so far removed from the turbulent elements of the upper river
+that they are not swayed by the cyclonic emotions of the Isisi, the cold
+and deliberate desire for slaughter which is characteristically
+Akasavian, or the electrical decisions of the Outer N'gombi.
+
+But they had their crises.
+
+To Bingini came all the notables of the district who claimed kinship
+with Ko-boru, and they sat in a great circle about the headman's hut,
+alternately eyeing the old headman and their stout relative, his
+daughter.
+
+"All my relations shall know this," began Ko-boru, after Okmimi, the
+witch-doctor, had formally burnt away the devils and ghosts that fringe
+all large assemblies, "that a great shame has come to us, every one,
+because of Yoka-m'furi. For this Yoka is to Sandi as a brother, and
+guides his little ship up and down the river, and because of this
+splendid position I gave him my own daughter by the first of my wives."
+
+"S'm-m!" murmured the council in agreement.
+
+"Also I built him a hut and gave him a garden, where his wife might
+work, and he has sat at family palavers. Now, I tell you that
+Yoka-m'furi is an evil man, for he has left my daughter, and has found
+another wife in the upper river, and he comes no more to this village,
+and my daughter weeps all day.
+
+"For three seasons he has not been to this village; when the moon comes
+again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the
+flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased
+miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe.
+
+For the man who deliberately separates himself from his wife for
+four seasons and does not spend twenty-four hours--"from sunrise to
+moonset" in her village is automatically divorced and freed from all
+responsibility. This is the custom of all people from the lands of
+the Great King to the sea.
+
+"Now, I have had a dream," Ko-boru went on, "and in this dream it was
+told me that I should call you all together, and that I and the chief of
+my councillors and friends should go to Sandi and tell him what is
+true."
+
+"Brother and uncle," said Bechimi of G'lara, "I will go with you, for
+once I spoke to Sandi and he spoke to me, and because of his cunning
+memory he will recall Bechimi, who picked up his little black stick,
+when it fell, and gave it to him."
+
+Five were chosen to accompany Ko-boru, and they took canoe and travelled
+for less than five miles to the Residency.
+
+Sanders was entertaining Patricia Hamilton with stories of native feuds,
+when the unexpected deputation squatted in the sun before the verandah.
+
+"O Ko-boru," hailed Sanders, "why do you come?"
+
+Ko-boru was all for a long and impressive palaver, but recognized a
+certain absence of encouragement in the Commissioner's tone. Therefore
+he came straight to the point.
+
+"Now, you are our father and our mother, Sandi," he said, in conclusion,
+"and when you speak, all wonders happen. Also you have very beautiful
+friends, Militini, who speak a word and set his terrible soldiers moving
+like leopards towards a kill, and Tibbetti, the young one who is
+innocent and simple. So I say to you, Sandi, that if you speak one word
+to Yoka, he will come back to my daughter, his wife."
+
+Sanders stood by the rail of the stoep and looked down upon the
+spokesman.
+
+"I hear strange things, Ko-boru," he said quietly. "They tell me stories
+of a woman with many lovers and an evil tongue; and once there came to
+me Yoka with a wounded head, for this daughter of yours is very quick in
+her anger."
+
+"Lord," said the flustered Ko-boru, "such things happen even in love."
+
+"All things happen in love," said Sanders, with a little smile, "and, if
+it is to be, Yoka will return. Also, if it is to be, he will not go back
+to the woman, and she will be free. This palaver is finished."
+
+"Lord," pleaded Ko-boru, "the woman will do no more angry things. Let
+him come back from sunrise to moonset----"
+
+"This palaver is finished," repeated Sanders.
+
+On their way back to Bingini the relatives of Ko-boru made a plot. It
+was the first plot that had been hatched in the shadow of headquarters
+for twenty years.
+
+"Would it be indiscreet to ask what your visitors wanted?" asked the
+girl, as the crestfallen deputation was crossing the square to their
+canoe.
+
+"It was a marriage palaver," replied Sanders, with a little grimace,
+"and I was being requested to restore a husband to a temperamental lady
+who has a passion for shying cook-pots at her husband when she is
+annoyed."
+
+The girl's laughing eyes were fixed upon his.
+
+"Poor Mr. Sanders!" she said, with mock seriousness.
+
+"Don't be sorry for me," smiled Sanders. "I'm rather domestic, really,
+and I'm interested in this case because the man concerned is my
+steersman--the best on the river, and a capital all-round man. Besides
+that," he went on seriously, "I regard them all as children of mine. It
+is right that a man who shirks his individual responsibilities to the
+race should find a family to 'father.'"
+
+"Why do you?" she asked, after a little pause.
+
+"Why do I what?"
+
+"Shirk your responsibilities," she said. "This is a healthy and a
+delightful spot: a woman might be very happy here."
+
+There was an awkward silence.
+
+"I'm afraid I've been awfully impertinent," said Patricia, hurriedly
+rising, "but to a woman there is a note of interrogation behind every
+bachelor--especially nice bachelors--and the more 'confirmed' he is, the
+bigger the question mark."
+
+Sanders rose to her.
+
+"One of these days I shall do something rash," he threatened, with that
+shy laugh of his. "Here is your little family coming."
+
+Bones and Hamilton were discussing something heatedly, and justice was
+on the side of Lieutenant Tibbetts, if one could judge by the frequency
+with which he stopped and gesticulated.
+
+"It really is too bad," said the annoyed Hamilton, as he mounted the
+steps to the stoep, followed by Bones, who, to do him justice, did not
+adopt the attitude of a delinquent, but was, on the contrary, injured
+virtue personified.
+
+"What is too bad, dear?" asked the girl sympathetically.
+
+"A fortnight ago," said Hamilton, "I told this silly ass----"
+
+"Your jolly old brother is referrin' to me, dear lady," explained Bones.
+
+"Who else could I be referring to?" demanded the other truculently. "I
+told him to have all the company accounts ready by to-morrow. You know,
+sir, that the paymaster is coming down from Administration to check 'em,
+and will you believe me, sir"--he glared at Bones, who immediately
+closed his eyes resignedly--"would you believe me that, when I went to
+examine those infernal accounts, they were all at sixes and sevens?"
+
+"Threes an' nines, dear old officer," murmured Bones, waking up, "the
+matter in dispute being a trifle of thirty-nine dollars, which I've
+generously offered to make up out of my own pocket."
+
+He beamed round as one who expected applause.
+
+"And on the top of this," fumed Hamilton, "he talks of taking Pat for an
+early morning picnic to the village island!"
+
+"Accompanied by the jolly old accounts," corrected Bones. "Do me
+justice, sir and brother-officer. I offered to take the books with me,
+an' render a lucid and convincin' account of my stewardship."
+
+"Don't make me laugh," snarled Hamilton, stamping into the bungalow.
+
+"Isn't he naughty?" said Bones admiringly.
+
+"Now, Bones," warned the girl, "I shan't go unless you keep your word
+with Alec."
+
+Bones drew himself up and saluted.
+
+"Dear old friend," he said proudly, "put your faith in Bones."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"H.M. Launch No. 36 (Territories)," as it was officially described on
+the stores record, had another name, which she earned in her early days
+through certain eccentricities of construction. Though she might not in
+justice be called the _Wiggle_ any longer, yet the _Wiggle_ she was from
+one end of the river to the other, and even native men called her
+"Komfuru," which means "that which does not run straight."
+
+It had come to be recognized that the _Wiggle_ was the especial charge
+of Lieutenant Tibbetts. Bones himself was the first to recognize this
+right. There were moments when he inferred that the _Wiggle's_ arrival
+on the station at the time he was making his own first appearance was
+something more than a coincidence.
+
+She was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a launch, for she
+possessed a square, open dining saloon and two tiny cabins amidships.
+Her internal works were open to the light of day, and her engineer
+lived in the engine-room up to his waist and on deck from his waist up,
+thus demonstrating the possibility of being in two places at once.
+
+The _Wiggle_, moreover, possessed many attributes which are denied to
+other small steamers. She had, for example, a Maxim gun on her tiny
+forecastle. She had a siren of unusual power and diabolical tone, she
+was also fitted with a big motor-horn, both of which appendages were
+Bones's gift to his flagship. The motor-horn may seem superfluous, but
+when the matter is properly explained, you will understand the necessity
+for some less drastic method of self-advertisement than the siren.
+
+The first time the siren had been fitted Bones had taken the _Wiggle_
+through "the Channel." Here the river narrows and deepens, and the
+current runs at anything from five to seven knots an hour. Bones was
+going up stream, and met the Bolalo Mission steamer coming down. She had
+dipped her flag to the _Wiggle's_ blue ensign, and Bones had replied
+with two terrific blasts on his siren.
+
+After that the _Wiggle_ went backwards, floating with the current all
+ways, from broadside on to stern first, for in those two blasts Bones
+had exhausted the whole of his steam reserve.
+
+She was also equipped with wireless. There was an "aerial" and an
+apparatus which Bones had imported from England at a cost of twelve
+pounds, and which was warranted to receive messages from two hundred
+miles distant. There was also a book of instructions. Bones went to his
+hut with the book and read it. His servant found him in bed the next
+morning, sleeping like a child, with his hand resting lightly upon the
+second page.
+
+Sanders and Hamilton both took a hand at fixing the _Wiggle's_ wireless.
+The only thing they were all quite certain about was that there ought to
+be a wire somewhere. So they stretched the aerial from the funnel to the
+flagstaff at the stern of the boat, and then addressed themselves to the
+less simple solution of "making it work."
+
+They tried it for a week, and gave it up in despair.
+
+"They've had you, Bones," said Hamilton. "It doesn't 'went.' Poor old
+Bones!"
+
+"Your pity, dear old officer, is offensive," said Bones stiffly, "an' I
+don't mind tellin' you that I've a queer feelin'--I can't explain what
+it is, except that I'm a dooce of a psychic--that that machine is goin'
+to be jolly useful."
+
+But though Bones worked day and night, read the book of instructions
+from cover to cover, and took the whole apparatus to pieces, examining
+each part under a strong magnifying glass, he never succeeded either in
+transmitting or receiving a message, and the machine was repacked and
+stored in the spare cabin, and was never by any chance referred to,
+except by Hamilton in his most unpleasant moments.
+
+Bones took an especial delight in the _Wiggle_; it was his very own
+ship, and he gave her his best personal attention.
+
+It was Bones who ordered from London especially engraved notepaper
+headed "H. M. S. _Komfuru_"--the native name sounded more dignified than
+_Wiggle_, and more important than "Launch 36." It was Bones who
+installed the little dynamo which--when it worked--lit the cabins and
+even supplied power for a miniature searchlight. It was Bones who had
+her painted Service grey, and would have added another funnel if
+Hamilton had not detected the attempted aggrandizement. Bones claimed
+that she was dustproof, waterproof, and torpedo-proof, and Hamilton had
+voiced his regret that she was not also fool-proof.
+
+At five o'clock the next morning, when the world was all big hot stars
+and shadows, and there was no sound but the whisper of the running river
+and the "ha-a-a-a--ha-a-a-a" of breakers, Bones came from his hut,
+crossed the parade-ground, and, making his way by the light of a lantern
+along the concrete quay--it was the width of an average table--dropped
+on to the deck and kicked the custodian of the _Wiggle_ to wakefulness.
+
+Bones's satellite was one Ali Abid, who was variously described as Moor,
+Egyptian, Tripolitan, and Bedouin, but was by all ethnological
+indications a half-breed Kano, who had spent the greater part of his
+life in the service of a professor of bacteriology. This professor was
+something of a purist, and the association with Ali Abid, plus a
+grounding in the elementary subjects which are taught at St. Joseph's
+Mission School, Cape Coast Castle, had given Ali a gravity of demeanour
+and a splendour of vocabulary which many better favoured than he might
+have envied.
+
+"Arise," quoth Bones, in the cracked bass which he employed whenever he
+felt called upon to deliver his inaccurate versions of Oriental poets--
+
+     "Arise, for morning in the bowl of night
+     Has chucked a stone to put the stars to flight.
+     And lo! and lo!... Get up, Ali; the caravan is moving.
+     Oh, make haste!"
+
+("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once
+said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!")
+
+Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold,
+and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones
+had donated.
+
+"Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck.
+
+"Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your
+preliminary instructions presupposed that you had made necessary
+arrangements _re personnel_."
+
+Bones scratched his head.
+
+"Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I
+was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly
+old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue
+explicit an' particular instructions about grub?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "you didn't."
+
+"Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, when enjoying refreshing coma, possess
+delirium, hallucinations, highly imaginative, which dissipate when the
+subject recovers consciousness, but retain in brain cavity illusory
+reminiscences."
+
+Bones thrust his face into the other's.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me I dreamt it?" he hissed.
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "self-preservation compels complete acquiescence in
+your diagnosis."
+
+"You're childish," said Bones.
+
+He gave a few vague instructions in the best Bones manner, and stole up
+to the dark Residency. He had solemnly promised Sanders that he would
+rouse the girl without waking up the rest of the house.
+
+They were to go up stream to the Village Island, where the ironworkers
+of the Akasava had many curious implements to show her. Breakfast was
+to be taken on the boat, and they were to return for tiffin.
+
+Overnight she had shown Bones the window of her room, and Hamilton had
+offered to make a chalk mark on the sash, so there could be no mistaking
+the situation of the room.
+
+"If you wake me before sunrise, I shall do something I shall be sorry
+for," he warned Bones. "If you return without straightening the
+accounts, I shall do something which _you_ will be sorry for."
+
+Bones remembered this as he crept stealthily along the wooden verandah.
+To make doubly sure, he took off his boots and dropped them with a
+crash.
+
+"Sh!" said Bones loudly. "Sh, Bones! Not so much noise, you silly old
+ass!"
+
+He crept softly along the wooden wall and reconnoitred. The middle
+window was Hamilton's room, the left was Sanders's, the right was
+Patricia's. He went carefully to the right window and knocked. There was
+no answer. He knocked again. Still no reply. He knocked loudly.
+
+"Is that you, Bones?" growled Sanders's voice.
+
+Bones gasped.
+
+"Awfully sorry, sir," he whispered agitatedly--"my mistake entirely."
+
+He tiptoed to the left window and rapped smartly. Then he whistled, then
+he rapped again.
+
+He heard a bed creak, and turned his head modestly away.
+
+"It's Bones, dear old sister," he said, in his loudest whisper. "Arise,
+for mornin' in the bowl of light has----"
+
+Hamilton's voice raged at him.
+
+"I knew it was you, you blithering----"
+
+"Dear old officer," began Bones, "awfully sorry! Go to sleep again.
+Night-night!"
+
+"Go to the devil!" said a muffled voice.
+
+Bones, however, went to the middle window; here he could make no
+mistake. He knocked authoritatively.
+
+"Hurry up, ma'am," he said; "time is on the wing----"
+
+The sash was flung up, and again Bones confronted the furious Hamilton.
+
+"Sir," said the exasperated Bones, "how the dooce did you get here?"
+
+"Don't you know this room has two windows? I told you last night, you
+goop! Pat sleeps at the other end of the building. I told you that, too,
+but you've got a brain like wool!"
+
+"I am obliged to you, sir," said Bones, on his dignity, "for the
+information. I will not detain you."
+
+Hamilton groped on his dressing-table for a hair-brush.
+
+"Go back to bed, sir," said Bones, "an' don't forget to say your
+prayers."
+
+He was searching for the window in the other wing of the Residency,
+when the girl, who had been up and dressed for a quarter of an hour,
+came softly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Wow!" screeched Bones. "Oh, Lord, dear old sister, you gave me the
+dickens of a fright! Well, let's get along. Thank heavens, we haven't
+disturbed anybody."
+
+He was followed to the boat with the imprecations of two pyjamaed
+figures that stood on the stoep and watched his lank body melt in the
+darkness.
+
+"Send us a wireless when you're coming back!" roared Hamilton.
+
+"Cad!" said Bones, between his teeth.
+
+Ali Abid had not been idle. He had aroused Yoka, the steersman, and
+Boosoobi, the engineer, and these two men had accepted the unexpected
+call with the curious readiness which natives show on such occasions,
+and which suggests that they have pre-knowledge of the summons, and are
+only waiting the word.
+
+In one of the small cabins Ali had arranged the much-discussed company
+accounts ready for his lord's attention, and there was every promise of
+a happy and a profitable day when Yoka rang the engines "ahead," and the
+_Wiggle_ jerked her way to midstream.
+
+The east had grown pale, there was a murmur from the dark forests on
+either bank, the timorous chirping or bad-tempered squawk of a bird, a
+faint fragrance of burning gumwood from the fishing villages
+established on the river bank, where, in dancing spots of light, the
+women were tending their fires.
+
+There is no intermediate stage on the big river between darkness and
+broad daylight. The stars go out all at once, and the inky sky which
+serves then becomes a delicate blue. The shadows melt deeper and deeper
+into the forest, clearly revealing the outlines of the straight-stemmed
+trees. There is just this interregnum of pearl greyness, a sort of
+hush-light, which lasts whilst a man counts twenty, before the silver
+lances of the sun are flashing through the leaves, and the grey veil
+which blurs the islands to shapeless blotches in a river of dull silver
+is burnt to nothingness, and the islands are living things of vivid
+green set in waters of gold.
+
+"The sunrise!" said Bones, and waved his hand to the east with the air
+of one who was responsible for the miracle.
+
+The girl sat in a deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the
+freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat,
+a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The
+sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, a rainbow
+in flight.
+
+"Isn't that wonderful?" she whispered.
+
+Bones peered up at the birds, shading his eyes.
+
+"Just like a jolly old patchwork quilt," he said. "What a pity they
+can't talk till you teach 'em! They're awful bad eatin', too, though
+some fellers say they make a good curry----"
+
+"Oh, look, look!"
+
+The _Wiggle_ was swerving to the southern bank of the river, and two
+majestic flamingos standing at the water's edge had arrested the girl's
+attention.
+
+"_They're_ bad eatin', too," said the informative Bones. "The flesh is
+fishy an' too fat; heron are just the same."
+
+"Haven't you a soul, Bones?" she asked severely.
+
+"A soul, dear ma'am?" Bones asked, in astonishment. "Why, that's my
+specialty!"
+
+It was a delightful morning for the girl, for Bones had retired to his
+cabin at her earnest request, and was struggling with the company
+accounts, and she was left to enjoy the splendour of the day, to watch
+the iron-red waters piling up against the _Wiggle's_ bows, to feel the
+cool breezes that swept down from the far-away mountains, and all this
+without being under the necessity of making conversation with Bones.
+
+That gentleman had a no less profitable morning, for Ali Abid was a
+methodical and clerkly man, and unearthed the missing thirty-nine
+dollars in the Compensation Record.
+
+"Thank goodness!" said Bones, relieved. "You're a jolly old accountant,
+Ali. I'd never have found it."
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision
+of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack of concentration."
+
+"Have it your way," said Bones, "but get the statement out for me to
+copy."
+
+He awoke the girl from a profound reverie--which centred about shy and
+solemn bachelors who adopted whole nations of murderous children as
+their own--and proceeded to "take charge."
+
+This implied the noisy issuing of orders which nobody carried out, the
+manipulation of a telescope, anxious glances at the heavens, deep and
+penetrating scrutinies of the water, and a promenade back and forward
+from one side of the launch to the other. Bones called this "pacing the
+bridge," and invariably carried his telescope tucked under his arm in
+the process, and, as he had to step over Pat's feet every time, and
+sometimes didn't, she arrested his nautical wanderings.
+
+"You make me dizzy," she said. "And isn't that the island?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the early hours of the afternoon they re-embarked, the _capita_ of
+the village coming to the beach to see them off.
+
+They brought back with them a collection of spear-heads, gruesome
+execution knives, elephant swords, and wonder-working steel figures.
+
+"And the lunch was simply lovely, Bones," agreed the girl, as the
+_Wiggle_ turned her nose homeward. "Really, you can be quite clever
+sometimes."
+
+"Dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones, "you saw me to-day as I really am.
+The mask was off, and the real Bones, kindly, thoughtful, considerate,
+an'--if I may use the word without your foundin' any great hope upon
+it--tender. You saw me free from carkin' care, alert----"
+
+"Go along and finish your accounts, like a good boy," she said. "I'm
+going to doze."
+
+Doze she did, for it was a warm, dozy afternoon, and the boat was
+running swiftly and smoothly with the tide. Bones yawned and wrote,
+copying Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept
+contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his
+post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful--Yoka, whose hands
+turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river
+ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.
+
+Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes
+its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow passages
+between. At this season only one such passage--the centre of all--is
+safe. This is known as "The Passage of the Tree," because all boats,
+even the _Zaire_, must pass so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a
+great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the
+current is never strong here, for the passage is a shallow one. Yoka
+felt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer
+to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose
+dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more
+than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging
+between bough and water.
+
+"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset
+is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his
+head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his
+thought was accompanied by strange guttural noises.
+
+Patricia Hamilton was also thinking, but much more gracefully. Boosoobi
+sat by his furnace door, nodding. Sometimes he looked at the steam
+gauge, sometimes he kicked open the furnace door and chucked in a few
+billets of wood, but, in the main, he was listening to the soothing
+"chook-a-chook, chook-a-chook" of his well-oiled engines.
+
+"Woo-yow!" yawned Bones, stretched himself, and came blinking into the
+sunlight. The sun was nearly setting.
+
+"What the dooce----" said Bones. He stared round.
+
+The _Wiggle_ had run out from the mouth of the river and was at sea.
+There was no sign of land of any description. The low-lying shores of
+the territory had long since gone under the horizon.
+
+Bones laid his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping girl, and she woke
+with a start.
+
+"Dear old shipmate," he said, and his voice trembled, "we're alone on
+this jolly old ocean! Lost the steersman!"
+
+She realized the seriousness of the situation in a moment.
+
+The dozing engineer, now wide awake, came aft at Bones's call, and
+accepted the disappearance of the steersman without astonishment.
+
+"We'll have to go back," said Bones, as he swung the wheel round. "I
+don't think I'm wrong in sayin' that the east is opposite to the west,
+an', if that's true, we ought to be home in time for dinner."
+
+"Sar," said Boosoobi, who, being a coast boy, elected to speak English,
+"dem wood she no lib."
+
+"Hey?" gasped Bones, turning pale.
+
+"Dem wood she be done. I look um. I see um. I no find um."
+
+Bones sat down heavily on the rail.
+
+"What does he say?" Pat asked anxiously.
+
+"He says there's no more wood," said Bones. "The horrid old bunkers are
+empty, an' we're at the mercy of the tempest."
+
+"Oh, Bones!" she cried, in consternation.
+
+But Bones had recovered.
+
+"What about swimmin' to shore with a line?" he said. "It can't be more
+than ten miles!"
+
+It was Ali Abid who prevented the drastic step.
+
+"Sir," he said, "the subject on such occasions should act with
+deliberate reserve. Proximity of land presupposes research. The subject
+should assist rather than retard research by passivity of action, easy
+respiration, and general normality of temperature."
+
+"Which means, dear old Miss Hamilton, that you've got to keep your wool
+on," explained Bones.
+
+What might have happened is not to be recorded, for at that precise
+moment the s.s. _Paretta_ came barging up over the horizon.
+
+There was still steam in the _Wiggle's_ little boiler, and one log of
+wood to keep it at pressure.
+
+Bones was incoherent, but again Ali came to the rescue.
+
+"Sir," he said, "for intimating SOS-ness there is upon steamer or launch
+certain scientific apparatus, unadjusted, but susceptible to treatment."
+
+"The wireless!" spluttered Bones. "Good lor', the wireless!"
+
+Twenty minutes later the _Wiggle_ ran alongside the gangway of the s.s.
+_Paretta_, anticipating the arrival of the _Zaire_ by half an hour.
+
+The s.s. _Paretta_ was at anchor when Sanders brought the _Zaire_ to the
+scene.
+
+He saw the _Wiggle_ riding serenely by the side of the great ship,
+looking for all the world like a humming bird under the wings of an
+ostrich, and uttered a little prayer of thankfulness.
+
+"They're safe," he said to Hamilton. "O Yoka, take the _Zaire_ to the
+other side of the big boat."
+
+"Master, do we go back to-night to seek Ko-boru?" asked Yoka, who was
+bearing marks which indicated his strenuous experience, for he had
+fought his way clear of his captors, and had swum with the stream to
+headquarters.
+
+"To-morrow is also a day," quoth Sanders.
+
+Hamilton was first on the deck of the s.s. _Paretta_, and found his
+sister and a debonair and complacent Bones waiting for him. With them
+was an officer whom Hamilton recognized.
+
+"Company accounts all correct, sir," said Bones, "audited by the jolly
+old paymaster"--he saluted the other officer--"an' found correct, sir,
+thus anticipatin' all your morose an' savage criticisms."
+
+Hamilton gripped his hand and grinned.
+
+"Bones was really wonderful," said the girl, "they wouldn't have seen us
+if it hadn't been for his idea."
+
+"Saved by wireless, sir," said Bones nonchalantly. "It was a mere
+nothin'--just a flash of inspiration."
+
+"You got the wireless to work?" asked Hamilton incredulously.
+
+"No, sir," said Bones. "But I wanted a little extra steam to get up to
+the ship, so I burnt the dashed thing. I knew it would come in handy
+sooner or later."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE REMEDY
+
+
+Beyond the far hills, which no man of the Ochori passed, was a range of
+blue mountains, and behind this again was the L'Mandi country. This
+adventurous hunting men of the Ochori had seen, standing in a safe place
+on the edge of the Great King's country. Also N'gombi people, who are
+notoriously disrespectful of all ghosts save their own, had, upon a
+time, penetrated the northern forest to a high knoll which Nature had
+shaped to the resemblance of a hayrick.
+
+A huntsman climbing this after his lawful quarry might gain a nearer
+view of the blue mountains, all streaked with silver at certain periods
+of the year, when a hundred streams came leaping with feathery feet from
+crag to crag to strengthen the forces of the upper river, or, as some
+said, to create through underground channels the big lakes M'soobo and
+T'sambi at the back of the N'gombi country.
+
+And on summer nights, when the big yellow moon came up and showed all
+things in her own chaste way, you might see from the knoll of the
+hayrick these silver ribbons all a-glitter, though the bulk of the
+mountain was lost to sight.
+
+The river folk saw little of the L'Mandi, because L'Mandi territory lies
+behind the country of the Great King, who looked with a jealous eye upon
+comings and goings in his land, and severely restricted the movement and
+the communications of his own people.
+
+The Great King followed his uncle in the government of the pleasant
+O'Mongo lands, and he had certain advantages and privileges, the
+significance of which he very imperfectly interpreted.
+
+His uncle had died suddenly at the hands of Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
+C.M.G., and the land itself might have passed to the protection of the
+Crown, for there was gold in the country in large and payable
+quantities.
+
+That such a movement was arrested was due largely to the L'Mandi and the
+influence they were able to exercise upon the European Powers by virtue
+of their military qualities. Downing Street was all for a permanent
+occupation of the chief city and the institution of a conventional
+_régime_; but the L'Mandi snarled, clicked their heels, and made
+jingling noises with their great swords, and there was at that moment a
+Government in office in England which was rather impressed by
+heel-clicking and sword-jingling, and so the territory of the Great King
+was left intact, and was marked on all maps as Omongoland, and coloured
+red, as being within the sphere of British influence. On the other hand,
+the L'Mandi people had it tinted yellow, and described it as an integral
+portion of the German Colonial Empire.
+
+There was little communication between L'Mandi and Sanders's territory,
+but that little was more than enough for the Commissioner, since it took
+the shape of evangelical incursions carried out by missionaries who were
+in the happy position of not being obliged to say as much as "By your
+leave," since they had secured from a Government which was, as I say,
+impressed by heel-clicking and sword-jingling, an impressive document,
+charging "all commissioners, sub-commissioners, magistrates, and
+officers commanding our native forces," to give facilities to these good
+Christian gentlemen.
+
+There were missionaries in the Territories who looked askance at their
+brethren, and Ferguson, of the River Mission, made a journey to
+headquarters to lay his views upon the subject before the Commissioner.
+
+"These fellows aren't missionaries at all, Mr. Sanders; they are just
+political agents utilizing sacred symbols to further a political
+propaganda."
+
+"That is a Government palaver," smiled Sanders, and that was all the
+satisfaction Ferguson received. Nevertheless, Sanders was watchful, for
+there were times when the L'Mandi missioners and their friends strayed
+outside their sphere.
+
+Once the L'Mandi folk had landed in a village in the middle Ochori, had
+flogged the headman, and made themselves free of the commodities which
+the people of the village had put aside for the payment of their
+taxation.
+
+In his wrath, Bosambo, the chief, had taken ten war canoes; but Sanders,
+who had been in the Akasava on a shooting trip, was there before him,
+and had meted out swift justice to the evil-doers.
+
+"And let me tell you, Bosambo," said Sanders severely, "that you shall
+not bring spears except at my word."
+
+"Lord," said Bosambo, frankness itself, "if I disobeyed you, it was
+because I was too hot to think."
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"That I know," he said. "Now I tell you this, Bosambo, and this is the
+way of very wise men--that when they go to do evil things with a hot
+heart, they first sleep, and in their sleep their spirits go free and
+talk with the wise and the dead, and when they wake, their hearts are
+cool, and they see all the folly of the night, and their eyes are bright
+for their own faults."
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, "you are my father and my mother, and all the
+people of the river you carry in your arms. Now I say to you that when I
+go to do an evil thing I will first sleep, and I will make all my people
+sleep also."
+
+There are strange stories in circulation as to the manner in which
+Bosambo carried out this novel reform. There is the story of an Ochori
+wife-beater who, adjured by his chief, retired to slumber on his
+grievance, and came to his master the following morning with the
+information that he had not closed his eyes. Whereupon Bosambo clubbed
+him insensible, in order that Sanders's plan might have a fair chance.
+
+At least, this is the story which Hamilton retailed at breakfast one
+morning. Sanders, appealed to for confirmation, admitted cautiously that
+he had heard the legend, but did not trouble to make an investigation.
+
+"The art of governing a native country," he said, "is the art of not
+asking questions."
+
+"But suppose you want to know something?" demanded Patricia.
+
+"Then," said Sanders, with a twinkle in his eyes, "you must pretend that
+you know."
+
+"What is there to do to-day?" asked Hamilton, rolling his serviette.
+
+He addressed himself to Lieutenant Tibbetts, who, to Sanders's intense
+annoyance, invariably made elaborate notes of all the Commissioner said.
+
+"Nothin' until this afternoon, sir," said Bones, closing his notebook
+briskly, "then we're doin' a little deep-sea fishin'."
+
+The girl made a grimace.
+
+"We didn't catch anything yesterday, Bones," she objected.
+
+"We used the wrong kind of worm," said Bones confidently. "I've found a
+new worm nest in the plantation. Jolly little fellers they are, too."
+
+"What are we doing to-day, Bones?" repeated Hamilton ominously.
+
+Bones puckered his brows.
+
+"Deep-sea fishin', dear old officer and comrade," he repeated, "an'
+after dinner a little game of tiddly-winks--Bones _v._ jolly old
+Hamilton's sister, for the championship of the River an' the Sanders
+Cup."
+
+Hamilton breathed deeply, but was patient.
+
+"Your King and your country," he said, "pay you seven and eightpence per
+diem----"
+
+"Oh," said Bones, a light dawning, "you mean _work_?"
+
+"Strange, is it not," mused Hamilton, "that we should
+consider----Hullo!"
+
+They followed the direction of his eyes.
+
+A white bird was circling groggily above the plantation, as though
+uncertain where to alight. There was weariness in the beat of its wings,
+in the irregularity of its flight. Bones leapt over the rail of the
+verandah and ran towards the square. He slowed down as he came to a
+place beneath the bird, and whistled softly.
+
+Bones's whistle was a thing of remarkable sweetness--it was his one
+accomplishment, according to Hamilton, and had neither tune nor rhyme.
+It was a succession of trills, rising and falling, and presently, after
+two hesitating swoops, the bird rested on his outstretched hand. He came
+back to the verandah and handed the pigeon to Sanders.
+
+The Commissioner lifted the bird and with gentle fingers removed the
+slip of thin paper fastened to its leg by a rubber band.
+
+Before he opened the paper he handed the weary little servant of the
+Government to an orderly.
+
+"Lord, this is Sombubo," said Abiboo, and he lifted the pigeon to his
+cheek, "and he comes from the Ochori."
+
+Sanders had recognized the bird, for Sombubo was the swiftest, the
+wisest, and the strongest of all his messengers, and was never
+dispatched except on the most critical occasions.
+
+He smoothed the paper and read the letter, which was in Arabic.
+
+     "From the servant of God Bosambo, in the Ochori City, to Sandi,
+     where-the-sea-runs.
+
+     "There have come three white men from the L'Mandi country, and they
+     have crossed the mountains. They sit with the Akasava in full
+     palaver. They say there shall be no more taxes for the People of
+     the River, but there shall come a new king greater than any. And
+     every man shall have goats and salt and free hunting. They say the
+     Akasava shall be given all the Ochori country, also guns like the
+     white man. Many guns and a thousand carriers are in the mountains
+     waiting to come. I hold the Ochori with all my spears. Also the
+     Isisi chief calls his young men for your King.
+
+     "Peace be on your house in the name of Allah Compassionate and
+     Merciful."
+
+"M-m!" said Sanders, as he folded the paper. "I'm afraid there will be
+no fishing this afternoon. Bones, take the _Wiggle_ and get up to the
+Akasava as fast as you can; I will follow on the _Zaire_. Abiboo!"
+
+"Lord?"
+
+"You will find me a swift Ochori pigeon. Hamilton, scribble a line to
+Bosambo, and say that he shall meet Bones by Sokala's village."
+
+Half an hour later Bones was sending incomprehensible semaphore signals
+of farewell as the _Wiggle_ slipped round the bend of the river.
+
+Sokala, a little chief of the Isisi, was a rich man. He had ten wives,
+each of whom lived in her own hut. Also each wife wore about her neck a
+great ring of brass weighing twenty pounds, to testify to the greatness
+and wealth of her lord.
+
+Sokala was wizened and lined of face, and across his forehead were many
+deep furrows, and it seemed that he lived in a state of perplexity as to
+what should become of all his riches when he died, for he was cursed
+with ten daughters--O'femi, Jubasami, K'sola, M'kema, Wasonga, Mombari,
+et cetera.
+
+When Wasonga was fourteen, there was revealed to Sokala, her father, a
+great wonder.
+
+The vision came at the tail end of a year of illness, when his head had
+ached for weeks together, and not even the brass wire twisted lightly
+about his skull brought him relief.
+
+Sokala was lying on his fine bed of skins, wondering why strange animals
+sat by the fire in the centre of his hut, and why they showed their
+teeth and talked in human language. Sometimes they were leopards,
+sometimes they were little white-whiskered monkeys that scratched and
+told one another stories, and these monkeys were the wisest of all, for
+they discussed matters which were of urgency to the sick man rolling
+restlessly from side to side.
+
+On this great night two such animals had appeared suddenly, a big grey
+fellow with a solemn face, and a very little one, and they sat staring
+into the fire, mechanically seeking their fleas until the little one
+spoke.
+
+"Sokala is very rich and has ten daughters."
+
+"That is true," said the other; "also he will die because he has no
+son."
+
+Sokala's heart beat furiously with fear, but he listened when the little
+black monkey spoke.
+
+"If Sokala took Wasonga, his daughter, into the forest near to The Tree
+and slew her, his daughters would become sons and he would grow well."
+
+And the other monkey nodded.
+
+As they talked, Sokala recognized the truth of all that they had said.
+He wondered that he had never thought of the matter before in this way.
+All night long he lay thinking--thinking--long after the fires had died
+down to a full red glow amidst white ashes, and the monkeys had
+vanished. In the cold dawn his people found him sitting on the side of
+the bed, and marvelled that he should have lived the night through.
+
+"Send me Wasonga, my daughter," he said, and they brought a sleepy girl
+of fourteen, tall, straight, and wholly reluctant. "We go a journey,"
+said Sokala, and took from beneath his bed his wicker shield and his
+sharp-edged throwing-spear.
+
+"Sokala hunts," said the people of the village significantly, and they
+knew that the end was very near, for he had been a great hunter, and men
+turn in death to the familiar pursuits of life.
+
+Three miles on the forest road to the Isisi city, Sokala bade his
+daughter sit on the ground.
+
+Bones had met and was in earnest conversation with the Chief of the
+Ochori, the _Wiggle_ being tied up at a wooding, when he heard a scream,
+and saw a girl racing through the wood towards him.
+
+Behind her, with the foolish stare on his face which comes to men in the
+last stages of sleeping sickness, his spear balanced, came Sokala.
+
+The girl tumbled in a wailing, choking heap at Bones's feet, and her
+pursuer checked at the sight of the white man.
+
+"I see you, Sokala,"[2] said Bones gently.
+
+[Footnote 2: The native equivalent for "Good morning."]
+
+"Lord," said the old man, blinking at the officer of the Houssas, "you
+shall see a wonderful magic when I slay this woman, for my daughters
+shall be sons, and I shall be a well man."
+
+Bones took the spear from his unresisting hand.
+
+"I will show you a greater magic, Sokala, for I will give you a little
+white stone which will melt like salt in your mouth, and you shall
+sleep."
+
+The old man peered from Lieutenant Tibbetts to the King of the Ochori.
+He watched Bones as he opened his medicine chest and shook out two
+little white pellets from a bottle marked "Veronal," and accepted them
+gratefully.
+
+"God bless my life," cried Bones, "don't chew 'em, you dear old
+silly--swallow 'em!"
+
+"Lord," said Sokala soberly, "they have a beautiful and a magic taste."
+
+Bones sent the frightened girl back to the village, and made the old man
+sit by a tree.
+
+"O Tibbetti," said Bosambo, in admiration, "that was a good palaver. For
+it is better than the letting of blood, and no one will know that Sokala
+did not die in his time."
+
+Bones looked at him in horror.
+
+"Goodness gracious heavens, Bosambo," he gasped, "you don't think I've
+poisoned him?"
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, nodding his head, "he die one time--he not fit
+for lib--you give um plenty no-good stuff. You be fine Christian feller
+same like me."
+
+Bones wiped the perspiration from his brow and explained the action of
+veronal. Bosambo was sceptical. Even when Sokala fell into a profound
+slumber, Bosambo waited expectantly for his death. And when he realized
+that Bones had spoken the truth, he was a most amazed man.
+
+"Master," he said, in that fluid Ochori dialect which seems to be made
+up of vowels, "this is a great magic. Now I see very surely that you
+hold wonderful ju-jus, and I have wronged you, for I thought you were
+without wisdom."
+
+"Cheer-oh!" said the gratified Bones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Near by the city of the Akasava is a small hill on which no vegetation
+grows, though it rises from a veritable jungle of undergrowth. The
+Akasava call this place the Hill of the Women, because it was here that
+M'lama, the King of the Akasava, slew a hundred Akasava maidens to
+propitiate M'shimba M'shamba, the god of storms. It was on the topmost
+point of the hill that Sanders erected a fine gallows and hung M'lama
+for his country's good. It had always been associated with the spiritual
+history of the Akasava, for ghosts and devils and strange ju-jus had
+their home hereabouts, and every great decision at which the people
+arrived was made upon its slopes. At the crest there was a palaver
+house--no more than a straw-thatched canopy affording shelter for four
+men at the most.
+
+On a certain afternoon all the chiefs, great and minor, the headmen, the
+warriors, and the leaders of fishing villages of the Akasava, squatted
+in a semicircle and listened to the oration of a bearded man, who spoke
+easily in the river dialect of the happy days which were coming to the
+people.
+
+By his side were two other white men--a tall, clean-shaven man with
+spectacles, and a stouter man with a bristling white moustache.
+
+Had the bearded man's address been in plain English, or even plain
+German, and had it been delivered to European hearers accustomed to
+taking its religion in allegories and symbols, it would have been
+harmless. As it was, the illustrations and the imagery which the speaker
+employed had no other interpretation to the simple-minded Akasava than a
+purely material one.
+
+"I speak for the Great King," said the orator, throwing out his arms, "a
+king who is more splendid than any. He has fierce and mighty armies that
+cover the land like ants. He holds thunder and lightning in his hand,
+and is greater than M'shimba M'shamba. He is the friend of the black man
+and the white, and will deliver you from all oppression. He will give
+you peace and full crops, and make you _capita_ over your enemies. When
+he speaks, all other kings tremble. He is a great buffalo, and the
+pawing of his hoofs shakes the earth.
+
+"This he says to you, the warrior people of the Akasava----"
+
+The message was destined to be undelivered.
+
+Heads began to turn, and there was a whisper of words. Some of the
+audience half rose, some on the outskirts of the gathering stole quietly
+away--the lesser chiefs were amongst these--and others, sitting stolidly
+on, assumed a blandness and a scepticism of demeanour calculated to meet
+the needs of the occasion.
+
+For Sanders was at the foot of the hill, a trim figure in white, his
+solar helmet pushed back to cover the nape of his neck from the slanting
+rays of the sun, and behind Sanders were two white officers and a
+company of Houssas with fixed bayonets. Not a word said Sanders, but
+slowly mounted the Hill of the Dead. He reached the palaver house and
+turned.
+
+"Let no man go," he said, observing the disposition of the gathering to
+melt away, "for this is a great palaver, and I come to speak for these
+God-men."
+
+The bearded orator glared at the Commissioner and half turned to his
+companions. The stout man with the moustache said something quickly, but
+Sanders silenced him with a gesture.
+
+"O people," said Sanders, "you all know that under my King men may live
+in peace, and death comes quickly to those who make war. Also you may
+worship in what manner you desire, though it be my God or the famous
+gods of your fathers. And such as preach of God or gods have full
+liberty. Who denies this?"
+
+"Lord, you speak the truth," said an eager headman.
+
+"Therefore," said Sanders, "my King has given these God-men a book[3]
+that they may speak to you, and they have spoken. Of a great king they
+tell. Also of wonders which will come to you if you obey him. But this
+king is the same king of whom the God-cross men and the water-God men
+tell. For he lives beyond the stars, and his name is God. Tell me,
+preacher, if this is the truth?"
+
+[Footnote 3: A book = written permission, any kind of document or
+writing.]
+
+The bearded man swallowed something and muttered, "This is true."
+
+"Also, there is no king in this world greater than my King, whom you
+serve," Sanders continued, "and it is your duty to be obedient to him,
+and his name is D'jorja." Sanders raised his hand to his helmet in
+salute. "This also the God-men will tell you."
+
+He turned to the three evangelists.
+
+Herr Professor Wiessmann hesitated for the fraction of a second. The
+pause was pardonable, for he saw the undoing of three months' good work,
+and his thoughts at that moment were with a certain party of carriers
+who waited in the mountains.
+
+"The question of earthly and heavenly dominion is always debatable," he
+began in English, but Sanders stopped him.
+
+"We will speak in the Akasava tongue," he said, "and let all men hear.
+Tell me, shall my people serve my King, or shall they serve another?"
+
+"They shall serve your King," growled the man, "for it is the law."
+
+"Thank you," said Sanders in English.
+
+The gathering slowly dispersed, leaving only the white men on the hill
+and a few lingering folk at the foot, watching the stolid native
+soldiery with an apprehension born of experience.
+
+"We should like you to dine with us," said Sanders pleasantly.
+
+The leader of the L'Mandi mission hesitated, but the thin man with the
+spectacles, who had been silent, answered for him.
+
+"We shall be pleased, Mr. Commissioner," he said. "After eating with
+these swine for a month, a good dinner would be very acceptable."
+
+Sanders said nothing, though he winced at the inelegant description of
+his people, and the three evangelists went back to their huts, which had
+been built for their use by the Akasava chief.
+
+An hour later that worthy sent for a certain witch-doctor.
+
+"Go secretly," he said, "and call all headmen and chiefs to the Breaking
+Tree in the forest. There they shall be until the moon comes up, and the
+L'Mandi lords will come and speak freely. And you shall tell them that
+the word he spoke before Sandi was no true word, but to-night he shall
+speak the truth, and when Sandi is gone we shall have wonderful guns
+and destroy all who oppose us."
+
+This the witch-doctor did, and came back by the river path.
+
+Here, by all accounts, he met Bosambo, and would have passed on; but the
+Chief of the Ochori, being in a curious mind and being, moreover,
+suspicious, was impressed by the importance of the messenger, and made
+inquiries....
+
+An old man is a great lover of life, and after the witch-doctor's head
+had been twice held under water--for the river was providentially
+near--he gasped the truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three missioners were very grateful guests indeed. They were the
+more grateful because Patricia Hamilton was an unexpected hostess. They
+clicked their heels and kissed her hand and drank her health many times
+in good hock. The dinner was a feast worthy of Lucullus, they swore, the
+wine was perfect, and the coffee--which Abiboo handed round with a
+solemn face--was wonderful.
+
+They sat chatting for a time, and then the bearded man looked at his
+watch.
+
+"To bed, gentlemen," he said gaily. "We leave you, Herr Commissioner, in
+good friendship, we trust?"
+
+"Oh, most excellent," said Sanders awkwardly, for he was a poor liar,
+and knew that his spies were waiting on the bank to "pick up" these
+potential enemies of his.
+
+He watched them go ashore and disappear into the darkness of the forest
+path that leads to the village.
+
+The moon was rising over the tall trees, and an expectant gathering of
+Akasava notables were waiting for a white spokesman who came not, when
+Bosambo and his bodyguard were engaged in lifting three unconscious men
+and laying them in a large canoe. He himself paddled the long boat to
+midstream, where two currents run swiftly, one to the sea and one to the
+Isisi River, which winds for a hundred miles until it joins the Congo.
+
+"Go with God," said Bosambo piously, as he stepped into his own canoe,
+and released his hold of the other with its slumbering freight, "for if
+your king is so great, he will bring you to your own lands; and if he is
+not great, then you are liars. O Abiboo"--he spoke over his shoulder to
+the sergeant of Houssas--"tell me, how many of the magic white stones of
+Bonesi did you put in their drink?"
+
+"Bosambo, I put four in each, as you told me, and if my lord Tibbetti
+misses them, what shall I say?"
+
+"You shall say," said Bosambo, "that this is Sandi's own word--that when
+men plan evils they must first sleep. And I think these men will sleep
+for a long time. Perhaps they will sleep for ever--all things are with
+God."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MEDICINE MAN
+
+
+At the flood season, before the turbulent tributaries of the Isisi River
+had been induced to return to their accustomed channels, Sanders came
+back to headquarters a very weary man, for he had spent a horrid week in
+an endeavour--successful, but none the less nerve-racking--to impress an
+indolent people that the swamping of their villages was less a matter of
+Providence and ghosts than the neglect of elementary precaution.
+
+"For I told you, Ranabini," said an exasperated Sanders, "that you
+should keep the upper channel free from trees and branches, and I have
+paid you many bags of salt for your services."
+
+"Lord, it is so," said Ranabini, scratching his brown leg thoughtfully.
+
+"At the full of the moon, before the rains, did I not ask you if the
+channel was clear, and did you not say it was like the street of your
+village?" demanded Sanders, in wrath.
+
+"Lord," said Ranabini frankly, "I lied to you, thinking your lordship
+was mad. For what other man would foresee with his wonderful eye that
+rains would come? Therefore, lord, I did not think of the upper channel,
+and many trees floated down and made a little dam. Lord, I am an
+ignorant man, and my mind is full of my own brother, who has come from a
+long distance to see me, for he is a very sick man."
+
+Sanders's mind was occupied by no thought of Ranabini's sick brother, as
+the dazzling white _Zaire_ went thrashing her way down stream. For he
+himself was a tired man, and needed rest, and there was a dose of
+malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as
+though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and
+these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each
+lightning flicker a momentary unconsciousness.
+
+Captain Hamilton met him on the quay, and when Sanders landed--walking a
+thought unsteadily, and instantly began a long and disjointed account of
+his adventures on a Norwegian salmon river--Hamilton took him by the arm
+and led the way to the bungalow.
+
+In ten minutes he was assisting Sanders into his pyjamas, Sanders
+protesting, albeit feebly, and when, after forcing an astonishing amount
+of quinine and arsenic down his chief's throat, Hamilton came from the
+semi-darkness of the bungalow to the white glare of the barrack square,
+Hamilton was thoughtful.
+
+"Let one of your women watch by the bed of the lord Sandi," said he to
+Sergeant Abiboo, of the Houssas, "and she shall call me if he grows
+worse."
+
+"On my life," said Abiboo, and was going off.
+
+"Where is Tibbetti?" asked Hamilton.
+
+The sergeant turned back and seemed embarrassed.
+
+"Lord," he said, "Tibbetti has gone with the lady, your sister, to make
+a palaver with Jimbujini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava. They sit in
+the forest in a magic circle, and lo! Tibbetti grows very wise."
+
+Hamilton swore under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his
+second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the
+drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from the coast.
+
+"Go tell the lord Tibbetti to come to me," he said, "but first send your
+woman to Sandi."
+
+Lieutenant Tibbetts, with his plain, boyish face all red with his
+exertions, yet dignified withal, came hurriedly from his studies.
+
+"Come aboard, sir," he said, and saluted extravagantly, blinking at his
+superior with a curious solemnity of mien which was his own peculiar
+expression.
+
+"Bones," said Hamilton, "where the dickens have you been?"
+
+Bones drew a long breath. He hesitated, then--
+
+"Knowledge," he said shortly.
+
+Hamilton looked at his subordinate in alarm.
+
+"Dash it, you aren't off your head, too, are you?"
+
+Bones shook his head with vigour.
+
+"Knowledge of the occult, sir and brother-officer," he said. "One is
+never too old to learn, sir, in this jolly old world."
+
+"Quite right," said Hamilton; "in fact, I'm pretty certain that you'll
+never live long enough to learn everything."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Bones.
+
+The girl, who had had less qualms than Bones when the summons arrived,
+and had, in consequence, returned more leisurely, came into the room.
+
+"Pat," said her brother, "Sanders is down with fever."
+
+"Fever!" she said a little breathlessly. "It isn't--dangerous?"
+
+Bones, smiling indulgently, soothed her.
+
+"Nothin' catchin', dear Miss Patricia Hamilton," he began.
+
+"Please don't be stupid," she said so fiercely that Bones recoiled. "Do
+you think I'm afraid of catching anything? Is it dangerous for Mr.
+Sanders?" she asked her brother.
+
+"No more dangerous than a cold in the head," he answered flippantly. "My
+dear child, we all have fever. You'll have it, too, if you go out at
+sunset without your mosquito boots."
+
+He explained, with the easy indifference of a man inured to malaria,
+the habits of the mosquito--his predilection for ankles and wrists,
+where the big veins and arteries are nearer to the surface--but the girl
+was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so
+alarmed Hamilton that she abandoned it.
+
+"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a
+trivet in the morning."
+
+She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast
+his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand
+shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought
+Patricia Hamilton, and said so.
+
+"Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit
+for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is
+simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you
+remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply
+delirious--ravin'--off my head."
+
+"So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we
+didn't think you were ill."
+
+"If you'd seen me," Bones went on, solemnly shaking one skinny
+forefinger at the girl, "you'd have said: 'Bones is for the High Jump.'"
+
+"I should have said nothing so vulgar, Bones," she retorted. "And was it
+malaria?"
+
+"Ah," said Hamilton triumphantly, "I was too much of a gentleman to hint
+that it wasn't. Press the question, Pat."
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders and cast a look of withering contempt upon
+his superior.
+
+"In the execution of one's duty, dear Miss Patricia H," he said, "the
+calibre of the gun that lays a fellow low, an' plunges his relations an'
+creditors into mournin', is beside the point. The only consideration, as
+dear old Omar says, is--
+
+     "'The movin' finger hits, an', havin' hit,
+     Moves on, tum tumty tumty tay,
+     And all a feller does won't make the slightest difference.'"
+
+"Is that Omar or Shakespeare?" asked the dazed Hamilton.
+
+"Be quiet, dear. What was the illness, Bones?"
+
+"Measles," said Hamilton brutally, "and German measles at that."
+
+"Viciously put, dear old officer, but, nevertheless, true," said Bones
+buoyantly. "But when the hut's finished, I'll return good for evil.
+There's goin' to be a revolution, Miss Patricia Hamilton. No more fever,
+no more measles--health, wealth, an' wisdom, by gad!"
+
+"Sunstroke," diagnosed Hamilton. "Pull yourself together, Bones--you're
+amongst friends."
+
+But Bones was superior to sarcasm.
+
+There was a creature of Lieutenant Tibbetts a solemn, brown man, who
+possessed, in addition to a vocabulary borrowed from a departed
+professor of bacteriology, a rough working knowledge of the classics.
+This man's name was, as I have already explained, Abid Ali or Ali Abid,
+and in him Bones discovered a treasure beyond price.
+
+Bones had recently built himself a large square hut near the
+seashore--that is to say, he had, with the expenditure of a great amount
+of midnight oil, a pair of compasses, a box of paints, and a T-square,
+evolved a somewhat complicated plan whereon certain blue oblongs stood
+for windows, and certain red cones indicated doors. To this he had added
+an elevation in the severe Georgian style.
+
+With his plan beautifully drawn to scale, with sectional diagrams and
+side elevations embellishing its margin, he had summoned Mojeri of the
+Lower Isisi, famous throughout the land as a builder of great houses,
+and to him he had entrusted the execution of his design.
+
+"This you shall build for me, Mojeri," said Bones, sucking the end of
+his pencil and gazing lovingly at the plan outspread before him, "and
+you shall be famous all through the world. This room shall be twice as
+large as that, and you shall cunningly contrive a passage so that I may
+move from one to the other, and none see me come or go. Also, this shall
+be my sleeping-place, and this a great room where I will practise
+powerful magics."
+
+Mojeri took the plan in his hand and looked at it. He turned it upside
+down and looked at it that way. Then he looked at it sideways.
+
+"Lord," said he, putting down the plan with a reverent hand, "all these
+wonders I shall remember."
+
+"And did he?" asked Hamilton, when Bones described the interview.
+
+Bones blinked and swallowed.
+
+"He went away and built me a square hut--just a plain square hut. Mojeri
+is an ass, sir--a jolly old fraud an' humbug, sir. He----"
+
+"Let me see the plan," said Hamilton, and his subordinate produced the
+cartridge paper.
+
+"H'm!" said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny. "Very pretty. But how
+did you get into your room?"
+
+"Through the door, dear old officer," said the sarcastic Bones.
+
+"I thought it might be through the roof," said Hamilton, "or possibly
+you made one of your famous dramatic entries through a star-trap in the
+floor--
+
+     "'Who is it speaks in those sepulchral tones?
+     It is the demon king--the grisly Bones!
+                                      Bing!'
+
+"and up you pop amidst red fire and smoke."
+
+A light dawned on Bones.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, jolly old Ham, that I forgot to put a door into
+my room?" he asked incredulously, and peered over his chief's shoulder.
+
+"That is what I mean, Bones. And where does the passage lead to?"
+
+"That goes straight from my sleepin' room to the room marked L," said
+Bones, in triumph.
+
+"Then you _were_ going to be a demon king," said the admiring Hamilton.
+"But fortunately for you, Bones, the descent to L is not so easy--you've
+drawn a party wall across----"
+
+"L stands for laboratory," explained the architect hurriedly. "An'
+where's the wall? God bless my jolly old soul, so I have! Anyway, that
+could have been rectified in a jiffy."
+
+"Speaking largely," said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny of the plan,
+"I think Mojeri has acted wisely. You will have to be content with the
+one room. What was the general idea of the house, anyway?"
+
+"Science an' general illumination of the human mind," said Bones
+comprehensively.
+
+"I see," said Hamilton. "You were going to make fireworks. A splendid
+idea, Bones."
+
+"Painful as it is to undeceive you, dear old sir," said Bones,
+with admirable patience, "I must tell you that I'm takin' up my
+medical studies where I left off. Recently I've been wastin' my time,
+sir: precious hours an' minutes have been passed in frivolous
+amusement--_tempus fugit_, sir an' captain, _festina lente_, an'
+I might add----"
+
+"Don't," begged Hamilton; "you give me a headache."
+
+There was a look of interest in Bones's eyes.
+
+"If I may be allowed to prescribe, sir----" he began.
+
+"Thanks, I'd rather have the headache," replied Hamilton hastily.
+
+It was nearly a week before the laboratory was fitted that Bones gave a
+house-warming, which took the shape of an afternoon tea. Bones, arrayed
+in a long white coat, wearing a ferocious lint mask attached to huge
+mica goggles, through which he glared on the world, met the party at the
+door and bade them a muffled welcome. They found the interior of the hut
+a somewhat uncomfortable place. The glass retorts, test tubes, bottles,
+and the paraphernalia of science which Bones had imported crowded the
+big table, the shelves, and even overflowed on to the three available
+chairs.
+
+"Welcome to my little workroom," said the hollow voice of Bones from
+behind the mask. "Wel----Don't put your foot in the crucible, dear old
+officer! You're sittin' on the methylated spirits, ma'am! Phew!"
+
+Bones removed his mask and showed a hot, red face.
+
+"Don't take it off, Bones," begged Hamilton; "it improves you."
+
+Sanders was examining the microscope, which stood under a big glass
+shade.
+
+"You're very complete, Bones," he said approvingly. "In what branch of
+science are you dabbling?"
+
+"Tropical diseases, sir," said Bones promptly, and lifted the shade.
+"I'm hopin' you'll allow me to have a look at your blood after tea."
+
+"Thank you," said Sanders. "You had better practise on Hamilton."
+
+"Don't come near me!" threatened Hamilton.
+
+It was Patricia who, when the tea-things had been removed, played the
+heroine.
+
+"Take mine," she said, and extended her hand.
+
+Bones found a needle, and sterilized it in the flame of a spirit lamp.
+
+"This won't hurt you," he quavered, and brought the point near the
+white, firm flesh. Then he drew it back again.
+
+"This won't hurt you, dear old miss," he croaked, and repeated the
+performance.
+
+He stood up and wiped his streaming brow.
+
+"I haven't the heart to do it," he said dismally.
+
+"A pretty fine doctor you are, Bones!" she scoffed, and took the needle
+from his hand. "There!"
+
+Bones put the tiny crimson speck between his slides, blobbed a drop of
+oil on top, and focussed the microscope.
+
+He looked for a long time, then turned a scared face to the girl.
+
+"Sleepin' sickness, poor dear old Miss Hamilton!" he gasped. "You're
+simply full of tryps! Good Lord! What a blessin' for you I discovered
+it!"
+
+Sanders pushed the young scientist aside and looked. When he turned his
+head, the girl saw his face was white and drawn, and for a moment a
+sense of panic overcame her.
+
+"You silly ass," growled the Commissioner, "they aren't trypnosomes! You
+haven't cleaned the infernal eyepiece!"
+
+"Not trypnosomes?" said Bones.
+
+"You seem disappointed, Bones," said Hamilton.
+
+"As a man, I'm overjoyed," replied Bones gloomily; "as a scientist, it's
+a set-back, dear old officer--a distinct set-back."
+
+The house-warming lasted a much shorter time than the host had intended.
+This was largely due to the failure of a very beautiful experiment which
+he had projected. In order that the rare and wonderful result at which
+he aimed should be achieved, Bones had the hut artificially darkened,
+and they sat in a hot and sticky blackness, whilst he knocked over
+bottles and swore softly at the instruments his groping hand could not
+discover. And the end of the experiment was a large, bad smell.
+
+"The women and children first," said Hamilton, and dived for the door.
+
+They took farewell of Bones at a respectful distance.
+
+Hamilton went across to the Houssa lines, and Sanders walked back to the
+Residency with the girl. For a little while they spoke of Bones and his
+newest craze, and then suddenly the girl asked--
+
+"You didn't really think there were any of those funny things in my
+blood, did you?"
+
+Sanders looked straight ahead.
+
+"I thought--you see, we know--the tryp is a distinct little body, and
+anybody who had lived in this part of the world for a time can pick him
+out. Bones, of course, knows nothing thoroughly--I should have
+remembered that."
+
+She said nothing until they reached the verandah, and she turned to go
+to her room.
+
+"It wasn't nice, was it?" she said.
+
+Sanders shook his head.
+
+"It was a taste of hell," he said simply. And she fetched a quick, long
+sigh and patted his arm before she realized what she was doing.
+
+Bones, returning from his hut, met Sanders hurrying across the square.
+
+"Bones, I want you to go up to the Isisi," said the Commissioner.
+"There's an outbreak of some weird disease, probably due to the damming
+of the little river by Ranabini, and the flooding of the low forests."
+
+Bones brightened up.
+
+"Sir an' Excellency," he said gratefully, "comin' from you, this tribute
+to my scientific----"
+
+"Don't be an ass, Bones!" said Sanders irritably. "Your job is to make
+these beggars work. They'll simply sit and die unless you start them on
+drainage work. Cut a few ditches with a fall to the river; kick Ranabini
+for me; take up a few kilos of quinine and dose them."
+
+Nevertheless, Bones managed to smuggle on board quite a respectable
+amount of scientific apparatus, and came in good heart to the despondent
+folk of the Lower Isisi.
+
+Three weeks after Bones had taken his departure, Sanders was sitting at
+dinner in a very thoughtful mood.
+
+Patricia had made several ineffectual attempts to draw him into a
+conversation, and had been answered in monosyllables. At first she had
+been piqued and a little angry, but, as the meal progressed, she
+realized that matters of more than ordinary seriousness were occupying
+his thoughts, and wisely changed her attitude of mind. A chance
+reference to Bones, however, succeeded where more pointed attempts had
+failed.
+
+"Yes," said Sanders, in answer to the question she had put, "Bones has
+some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for
+two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his
+forte."
+
+"Don't you sometimes feel the need of a doctor here?" she asked, and
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"There is very little necessity. The military doctor comes down
+occasionally from headquarters, and we have a native apothecary. We have
+few epidemics amongst the natives, and those the medical missions deal
+with--sleep-sickness, beri-beri and the like. Sometimes, of course, we
+have a pretty bad outbreak which spreads----Don't go, Hamilton--I want
+to see you for a minute."
+
+Hamilton had risen, and was making for his room, with a little nod to
+his sister.
+
+At Sanders's word he turned.
+
+"Walk with me for a few minutes," said Sanders, and, with an apology to
+the girl, he followed the other from the room.
+
+"What is it?" asked Hamilton.
+
+Sanders was perturbed--this he knew, and his own move towards his room
+was in the nature of a challenge for information.
+
+"Bones," said the Commissioner shortly. "Do you realize that we have had
+no news from him since he left?"
+
+Hamilton smiled.
+
+"He's an erratic beggar, but nothing could have happened to him, or we
+should have heard about it."
+
+Sanders did not reply at once. He paced up and down the gravelled path
+before the Residency, his hands behind him.
+
+"No news has come from Ranabini's village for the simple reason that
+nobody has entered or left it since Bones arrived," he said. "It is
+situated, as you know, on a tongue of land at the confluence of two
+rivers. No boat has left the beaches, and an attempt to reach it by land
+has been prevented by force."
+
+"By force?" repeated the startled Hamilton.
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"I had the report in this morning. Two men of the Isisi from another
+village went to call on some relations. They were greeted with arrows,
+and returned hurriedly. The headman of M'gomo village met with the same
+reception. This came to the ears of my chief spy Ahmet, who attempted to
+paddle to the island in his canoe. At a distance of two hundred yards he
+was fired upon."
+
+"Then they've got Bones?" gasped Hamilton.
+
+"On the contrary, Bones nearly got Ahmet, for Bones was the marksman."
+
+The two men paced the path in silence.
+
+"Either Bones has gone mad," said Hamilton, "or----"
+
+"Or----?"
+
+Hamilton laughed helplessly.
+
+"I can't fathom the mystery," he said. "McMasters will be down
+to-morrow, to look at some sick men. We'll take him up, and examine the
+boy."
+
+It was a subdued little party that boarded the _Zaire_ the following
+morning, and Patricia Hamilton, who came to see them off, watched their
+departure with a sense of impending trouble.
+
+Dr. McMasters alone was cheerful, for this excursion represented a break
+in a somewhat monotonous routine.
+
+"It may be the sun," he suggested. "I have known several fellows who
+have gone a little nutty from that cause. I remember a man at Grand
+Bassam who shot----"
+
+"Oh, shut up, Mac, you grisly devil!" snapped Hamilton. "Talk about
+butterflies."
+
+The _Zaire_ swung round the bend of the river that hid Ranabini's
+village from view, but had scarcely come into sight when--
+
+"Ping!"
+
+Sanders saw the bullet strike the river ahead of the boat, and send a
+spiral column of water shooting into the air. He put up his glasses and
+focussed them on the village beach.
+
+"Bones!" he said grimly. "Take her in, Abiboo."
+
+As the steersman spun the wheel--
+
+"Ping!"
+
+This time the shot fell to the right.
+
+The three white men looked at one another.
+
+"Let every man take cover," said Sanders quietly. "We're going to that
+beach even if Bones has a battery of 75's!"
+
+An exclamation from Hamilton arrested him.
+
+"He's signalling," said the Houssa Captain, and Sanders put up his
+glasses again.
+
+Bones's long arms were waving at ungainly angles as he semaphored his
+warning.
+
+Hamilton opened his notebook and jotted down the message--
+
+"Awfully sorry, dear old officer," he spelt, and grinned at the
+unnecessary exertion of this fine preliminary flourish, "but must keep
+you away. Bad outbreak of virulent smallpox----"
+
+Sanders whistled, and pulled back the handle of the engine-room
+telegraph to "stop."
+
+"My God!" said Hamilton through his teeth, for he had seen such an
+outbreak once, and knew something of its horrors. Whole districts had
+been devastated in a night. One tribe had been wiped out, and the
+rotting frames of their houses still showed amidst the tangle of
+elephant grass which had grown up through the ruins.
+
+He wiped his forehead and read the message a little unsteadily, for his
+mind was on his sister--
+
+     "Had devil of fight, and lost twenty men, but got it under. Come
+     and get me in three weeks. Had to stay here for fear careless
+     devils spreading disease."
+
+Sanders looked at Hamilton, and McMasters chuckled.
+
+"This is where I get a swift vacation," he said, and called his servant.
+
+Hamilton leapt on to the rail, and steadying himself against a
+stanchion, waved a reply--
+
+"We are sending you a doctor."
+
+Back came the reply in agitated sweeps of arm--
+
+"Doctor be blowed! What am I?"
+
+"What shall I say, sir?" asked Hamilton after he had delivered the
+message.
+
+"Just say 'a hero,'" said Sanders huskily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BONES, KING-MAKER
+
+
+Patricia Hamilton, an observant young lady, had not failed to notice
+that every day, at a certain hour, Bones disappeared from view. It was
+not for a long time that she sought an explanation.
+
+"Where is Bones?" she asked one morning, when the absence of her
+cavalier was unusually protracted.
+
+"With his baby," said her brother.
+
+"Please don't be comic, dear. Where is Bones? I thought I saw him with
+the ship's doctor."
+
+The mail had come in that morning, and the captain and surgeon of the
+s.s. _Boma Queen_ had been their guests at breakfast.
+
+Hamilton looked up from his book and removed his pipe.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that Bones has kept his guilty secret all this
+time?" he asked anxiously.
+
+She sat down by his side.
+
+"Please tell me the joke. This isn't the first time you have ragged
+Bones about 'the baby'; even Mr. Sanders has done it."
+
+She looked across at the Commissioner with a reproving shake of her
+pretty head.
+
+"Have _I_ ragged Bones?" asked Sanders, in surprise. "I never thought I
+was capable of ragging anybody."
+
+"The truth is, Pat," said her brother, "there isn't any rag about the
+matter. Bones adopted a piccanin."
+
+"A child?"
+
+"A baby about a month old. Its mother died, and some old bird of a
+witch-doctor was 'chopping' it when Bones appeared on the scene."
+
+Patricia gave a little gurgle of delight and clapped her hands. "Oh,
+please tell me everything about it."
+
+"It was Sanders who told her of Henry Hamilton Bones, his dire peril and
+his rescue; it was Hamilton who embellished the story of how Bones had
+given his adopted son his first bath.
+
+"Just dropped him into a tub and stirred him round with a mop."
+
+Soon after this Bones came blithely up from the beach and across the
+parade-ground, his large pipe in his mouth, his cane awhirl.
+
+Hamilton watched him from the verandah of the Residency, and called over
+his shoulder to Patricia.
+
+It had been an anxious morning for Bones, and even Hamilton was
+compelled to confess to himself that he had felt the strain, though he
+had not mentioned the fact to his sister.
+
+Outside in the roadstead the intermediate Elder Dempster boat was
+waiting the return of the doctor. Bones had been to see him off. An
+important day, indeed, for Henry Hamilton Bones had been vaccinated.
+
+"I think it 'took,'" said Bones gravely, answering the other's question.
+"I must say Henry behaved like a gentleman."
+
+"What did Fitz say?"
+
+(Fitzgerald, the doctor, had come in accordance with his promise to
+perform the operation.)
+
+"Fitz?" said Bones, and his voice trembled. "Fitz is a cad!"
+
+Hamilton grinned.
+
+"He said that babies didn't feel pain, and there was Henry howling his
+young head off. It was horrible!"
+
+Bones wiped his streaming brow with a large and violent bandana, and
+looked round cautiously.
+
+"Not a word, Ham, to her!" he said, in a loud whisper.
+
+"Sorry!" said Hamilton, picking up his pipe. "Her knows."
+
+"Good gad!" said Bones, in despair, and turned to meet the girl.
+
+"Oh, Bones!" she said reproachfully, "you never told me!"
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, dropped his pipe,
+blinked, spread out his hands in deprecation, and picked up his pipe.
+
+From which it may be gathered that he was agitated.
+
+"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said tremulously, "I should be a horrid
+bounder if I denied Henry Hamilton Bones--poor little chap. If I never
+mentioned him, dear old sister, it is because----Ah, well, you will
+never understand."
+
+He hunched his shoulders dejectedly.
+
+"Don't be an ass, Bones. Why the dickens are you making a mystery of the
+thing?" asked Hamilton. "I'll certify you're a jolly good father to the
+brat."
+
+"Not 'brat,' dear old sir," begged Bones. "Henry is a human being with a
+human heart. That boy"--he wagged his finger solemnly--"knows me the
+moment I go into the hut. To see him sit up an' say 'Da!' dear old
+sister Hamilton," he went on incoherently, "to see him open his mouth
+with a smile, one tooth through, an' one you can feel with your little
+finger--why, it's--it's wonderful, jolly old Miss Hamilton! Damn it,
+it's wonderful!"
+
+"Bones!" cried the shocked girl.
+
+"I can't help it, madame," said Bones miserably. "Fitz cut his poor
+little, fat little arm. Oh, Fitz is a low cad! Cut it, my dear old
+Patricia, mercilessly--yes, mercilessly, brutally, an' the precious
+little blighter didn't so much as call for the police. Good gad, it was
+terrible!"
+
+His eyes were moist, and he blew his nose with great vigour.
+
+"I'm sure it was awful," she soothed him. "May I come and see him?"
+
+Bones raised a warning hand, and, though the habitat of the wonderful
+child could not have been less than half a mile away, lowered his voice.
+
+"He's asleep--fitfully, but asleep. I've told them to call me if he has
+a turn for the worse, an' I'm goin' down with a gramophone after dinner,
+in case the old fellow wants buckin' up. But now he's asleep, thankin'
+you for your great kindness an' sympathy, dear old miss, in the moment
+of singular trial."
+
+He took her hand and shook it heartily, tried to say something, and
+swallowed hard, then, turning, walked from the verandah in the direction
+of his hut.
+
+The girl was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"What a boy!" she said, half to herself.
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"Bones is very nice," he said, and she looked at him curiously.
+
+"That is almost eloquent," she said quietly.
+
+"I thought it was rather bald," he replied. "You see, few people really
+understand Bones. I thought, the first time I saw him, that he was a
+fool. I was wrong. Then I thought he was effeminate. I was wrong again,
+for he has played the man whenever he was called upon to do so. Bones
+is one of those rare creatures--a man with all the moral equipment of a
+good woman."
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his, and for a moment they held. Then hers
+dropped quickly, and she flushed ever so slightly.
+
+"I think you have defined the perfect man," she said, turning the leaves
+of her book.
+
+The next morning she was admitted to an audience with that paragon of
+paragons, Henry Hamilton Bones.
+
+He lived in the largest of the Houssa huts at the far end of the lines,
+and had for attendants two native women, for whom Bones had framed the
+most stringent and regimental of orders.
+
+The girl paused in the porch of the hut to read the typewritten
+regulations which were fastened by drawing-pins to a green baize board.
+
+They were bi-lingual, being in English and in coast Arabic, in which
+dialect Bones was something of a master. The girl wondered why they
+should be in English.
+
+"Absolutely necessary, dear old lady friend," explained Bones firmly.
+"You've no idea what a lot of anxiety I have had. Your dear old
+brother--God bless him!--is a topping old sport, but with children you
+can't be too careful, and Ham is awfully thoughtless. There, I've said
+it!"
+
+The English part of the regulations was brief, and she read it through.
+
+                    HENRY HAMILTON BONES (Care of).
+
+     1. Visitors are requested to make as little noise as possible. How
+     would you like to be awakened from refreshing sleep! Be unselfish,
+     and put yourself in his place.
+
+     2. It is absolutely forbidden to feed the child except with
+     articles a list of which may be obtained on application. Nuts and
+     chocolates are strictly forbidden.
+
+     3. The undersigned will not be responsible for articles broken by
+     the child, such as watches. If watches are used to amuse child,
+     they should be held by child's ear, when an interested expression
+     will be observed on child's face. On no account should child be
+     allowed--knowing no better--to bite watch, owing to danger from
+     glass, minute hand, etc.
+
+     4. In lifting child, grasp above waist under arms and raise slowly,
+     taking care that head does not fall back. Bring child close to
+     holder's body, passing left arm under child and right arm over.
+     Child should not be encouraged to sit up--though quite able to,
+     being very forward for eight months--owing to strain on back. On no
+     account should child be thrown up in the air and caught.
+
+     5. Any further information can be obtained at Hut 7.
+
+               (Signed)
+
+                     AUGUSTUS TIBBETTS, Lieutenant.
+
+"All based upon my personal observation and experience," said Bones
+triumphantly--"not a single tip from anybody."
+
+"I think you are really marvellous, Bones," said the girl, and meant it.
+
+Henry Hamilton Bones sat upright in a wooden cot. A fat-faced atom of
+brown humanity, bald-headed and big-eyed, he sucked his thumb and stared
+at the visitor, and from the visitor to Bones.
+
+Bones he regarded with an intelligent interest which dissolved into a
+fat chuckle of sheer delight.
+
+"Isn't it--isn't it simply extraordinary?" demanded Bones ecstatically.
+"In all your long an' painful experience, dear old friend an' co-worker,
+have you ever seen anything like it? When you remember that babies don't
+open their eyes until three weeks after they're born----"
+
+"Da!" said Henry Hamilton Bones.
+
+"Da yourself, Henry!" squawked his foster-father.
+
+"Do da!" said Henry.
+
+The smile vanished from Bones's face, and he bit his lip thoughtfully.
+
+"Do da!" he repeated. "Let me see, what is 'do da'?"
+
+"Do da!" roared Henry.
+
+"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said gently, "I don't know whether Henry
+wants a drink or whether he has a pain in his stomach, but I think that
+we had better leave him in more experienced hands."
+
+He nodded fiercely to the native woman nurse and made his exit.
+
+Outside they heard Henry's lusty yell, and Bones put his hand to his ear
+and listened with a strained expression on his face.
+
+Presently the tension passed.
+
+"It _was_ a drink," said Bones. "Excuse me whilst I make a note." He
+pulled out his pocket-book and wrote: "'Do da' means 'child wants
+drink.'"
+
+He walked back to the Residency with her, giving her a remarkable
+insight into Henry's vocabulary. It appeared that babies have a language
+of their own, which Bones boasted that he had almost mastered.
+
+She lay awake for a very long time that night, thinking of Bones, his
+simplicity and his lovableness. She thought, too, of Sanders, grave,
+aloof, and a little shy, and wondered....
+
+She woke with a start, to hear the voice of Bones outside the window.
+She felt sure that something had happened to Henry. Then she heard
+Sanders and her brother speaking, and realized that it was not Henry
+they were discussing.
+
+She looked at her watch--it was three o'clock.
+
+"I was foolish to trust that fellow," Sanders was saying, "and I know
+that Bosambo is not to blame, because he has always given a very wide
+berth to the Kulumbini people, though they live on his border."
+
+She heard him speak in a strange tongue to some unknown fourth, and
+guessed that a spy of the Government had come in during the night.
+
+"We'll get away as quickly as we can, Bones," Sanders said. "We can take
+our chance with the lower river in the dark; it will be daylight before
+we reach the bad shoals. You need not come, Hamilton."
+
+"Do you think Bones will be able to do all you want?" Hamilton's tone
+was dubious.
+
+"Pull yourself together, dear old officer," said Bones, raising his
+voice to an insubordinate pitch.
+
+She heard the men move from the verandah, and fell asleep again,
+wondering who was the man they spoke of and what mischief he had been
+brewing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a little tributary stream, which is hidden by the island of bats, was
+the village of Kulumbini. High elephant grass hid the poor huts even
+from they who navigate a cautious way along the centre of the narrow
+stream. On the shelving beach one battered old canoe of ironwood, with
+its sides broken and rusted, the indolence of its proprietor made plain
+by the badly spliced panels, was all that told the stranger that the
+habitations of man were nigh.
+
+Kulumbini was a term of reproach along the great river and amongst the
+people of the Akasava, the Isisi, and the N'gombi, no less than among
+that most tolerant of tribes the Ochori. They were savage people,
+immensely brave, terrible in battle, but more terrible after.
+
+Kulumbini, the village and city of the tribe, was no more than an
+outlier of a fairly important tribe which occupied forest land
+stretching back to the Ochori boundary. Their territory knew no frontier
+save the frontiers of caprice and desire. They had neither nationality
+nor national ambition, and would sell their spears for a bunch of fish,
+as the saying goes. Their one consuming passion and one great wish was
+that they should not be overlooked, and, so long as the tribes respected
+this eccentricity, the Kulumbini distressed no man.
+
+How this desire for isolation arose, none know. It is certain that once
+upon a time they possessed a king who so shared their views that he
+never came amongst them, but lived in a forest place which is called to
+this day S'furi-S'foosi, "The trees (or glade) of the distant king."
+They had demurred at Government inspection, and Sanders, coming up the
+little river on the first of his visits, was greeted by a shower of
+arrows, and his landing opposed by locked shields.
+
+There are many ways of disposing of opposition, not the least important
+of which is to be found in two big brass-barrelled guns which have their
+abiding place at each end of the _Zaire's_ bridge. There is also a
+method known as peaceful suasion. Sanders had compromised by going
+ashore for a peace palaver with a revolver in each hand.
+
+He had a whole fund of Bomongo stories, most of which are unfit for
+printing, but which, nevertheless, find favour amongst the primitive
+humorists of the Great River. By parable and story, by nonsense tale and
+romance, by drawing upon his imagination to supply himself with facts,
+by invoking ju-jus, ghosts, devils, and all the armoury of native
+superstition, he had, in those far-off times, prevailed upon the people
+of Kulumbini not only to allow him a peaceful entrance to their country,
+but--wonder of wonders!--to contribute, when the moon and tide were in
+certain relative positions, which in English means once every six
+months, a certain tithe or tax, which might consist of rubber, ivory,
+fish, or manioc, according to the circumstances of the people.
+
+More than this, he stamped a solemn treaty--he wrote it in a tattered
+laundry-book which had come into the chief's possession by some
+mysterious means--and he hung about the neck of Gulabala, the titular
+lord of these strange people, the medal and chain of chieftainship.
+
+Not to be outdone in courtesy, the chief offered him the choice of all
+the maidens of Kulumbini, and Sanders, to whom such offers were by no
+means novel, had got out of a delicate situation in his usual manner,
+having resort to witchcraft for the purpose. For he said, with due
+solemnity and hushed breath, that it had been predicted by a celebrated
+witch-doctor of the lower river that the next wife he should take to
+himself would die of the sickness-mongo, and said Sanders--
+
+"My heart is too tender for your people, O Chief, to lead one of your
+beautiful daughters to death."
+
+"O Sandi," replied Gulabala hopefully, "I have many daughters, and I
+should not miss one. And would it not be good service for a woman of my
+house to die in your hut?"
+
+"We see things differently, you and I," said Sanders, "for, according to
+my religion, if any woman dies from witchcraft, her ghost sits for ever
+at the foot of my bed, making terrifying faces."
+
+Thus Sanders had made his escape, and had received at odd intervals the
+tribute of these remote people.
+
+For years they had dwelt without interference, for they were an unlucky
+people to quarrel with, and, save for one or two trespasses on the part
+of Gulabala, there was no complaint made concerning them. It is not
+natural, however, for native people to prosper, as these folks did,
+without there growing up a desire to kill somebody. For does not the
+river saying run: "The last measure of a full granary is a measure of
+blood"?
+
+In the dead of a night Gulabala took three hundred spears across the
+frontier to the Ochori village of Netcka, and returned at dawned with
+the spears all streaky. And he brought back with him some twenty women,
+who would have sung the death-song of their men but for the fact that
+Gulabala and his warriors beat them.
+
+Gulabala slept all the day, he and his spears, and woke to a grisly
+vision of consequence.
+
+He called his people together and spoke in this wise--
+
+"Soon Sandi and his headmen will come, and, if we are here, there will
+be many folk hanged, for Sandi is a cruel man. Therefore let us go to a
+far place in the forest, carrying our treasure, and when Sandi has
+forgiven us, we will come back."
+
+A good plan but for the sad fact that Bosambo of the Ochori was less
+than fifty miles away at the dawn of that fatal day, and was marching
+swiftly to avenge his losses, for not only had Gulabala taken women, but
+he had taken sixty goats, and that was unpardonable.
+
+The scouts which Gulabala had sent out came back with the news that the
+way to sanctuary was barred by Bosambo.
+
+Now, of all the men that the Kulumbini hated, they hated none more than
+the Chief of the Ochori. For he alone never scrupled to overlook them,
+and to dare their anger by flogging such of them as raided his territory
+in search of game.
+
+"Ko," said Gulabala, deeply concerned, "this Bosambo is Sandi's dog. Let
+us go back to our village and say we have been hunting, for Bosambo will
+not cross into our lands for fear of Sandi's anger."
+
+They reached the village, and were preparing to remove the last evidence
+of their crime--one goat looks very much like another, but women can
+speak--when Sanders came striding down the village street, and Gulabala,
+with his curved execution knife in his hand, stood up by the side of the
+woman he had slain.
+
+"O Gulabala," said Sanders softly, "this is an evil thing."
+
+The chief looked left and right helplessly.
+
+"Lord," he said huskily, "Bosambo and his people put me to shame, for
+they spied on me and overlooked me. And we are proud people, who must
+not be overlooked--thus it has been for all time."
+
+Sanders pursed his lips and stared at the man.
+
+"I see here a fine high tree," he said, "so high that he who hangs from
+its top branch may say that no man overlooks him. There you shall hang,
+Gulabala, for your proud men to see, before they also go to work for my
+King, with chains upon their legs as long as they live."
+
+"Lord," said Gulabala philosophically, "I have lived."
+
+Ten minutes later he went the swift way which bad chiefs go, and his
+people were unresentful spectators.
+
+"This is the tenth time I have had to find a new chief in this belt,"
+said Sanders, pacing the deck of the _Zaire_, "and who on earth I am to
+put in his place I do not know."
+
+The _lokalis_ of the Kulumbini were already calling headmen to grand
+palaver. In the shade of the reed-thatched _lokali_ house, before the
+hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of
+ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and
+falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble.
+
+Bosambo came--by the river route--as Sanders was leaving the _Zaire_ to
+attend the momentous council.
+
+"How say you, Bosambo--what man of the Kulumbini folk will hold these
+people in check?"
+
+Bosambo squatted at his lord's feet and set his spear a-spinning.
+
+"Lord," he confessed, "I know of none, for they are a strange and
+hateful people. Whatever king you set above them they will despise. Also
+they worship no gods or ghosts, nor have they ju-ju or fetish. And, if a
+man does not believe, how may you believe him? Lord, this I say to
+you--set me above the Kulumbini, and I will change their hearts."
+
+But Sanders shook his head.
+
+"That may not be, Bosambo," he said.
+
+The palaver was a long and weary one. There were twelve good claimants
+for the vacant stool of office, and behind the twelve there were kinsmen
+and spears.
+
+From sunset to nigh on sunrise they debated the matter, and Sanders sat
+patiently through it all, awake and alert. Whether this might be said of
+Bones is questionable. Bones swears that he did not sleep, and spent
+the night, chin in hand, turning over the problem in his mind.
+
+It is certain he was awake when Sanders gave his summing up.
+
+"People of this land," said Sanders, "four fires have been burnt since
+we met, and I have listened to all your words. Now, you know how good it
+is that there should be one you call chief. Yet, if I take you,
+M'loomo"--he turned to one sullen claimant--"there will be war. And if I
+take B'songi, there will be killing. And I have come to this mind--that
+I will appoint a king over you who shall not dwell with you nor overlook
+you."
+
+Two hundred pairs of eyes watched the Commissioner's face. He saw the
+gleam of satisfaction which came at this concession to the traditional
+characteristic of the tribe, and went on, almost completely sure of his
+ground.
+
+"He shall dwell far away, and you, the twelve kinsmen of Gulabala, shall
+reign in his place--one at every noon shall sit in the chief's chair and
+keep the land for your king, who shall dwell with me."
+
+One of the prospective regents rose.
+
+"Lord, that is good talk, for so did Sakalaba, the great king of our
+race, live apart from us at S'furi-S'foosi, and were we not prosperous
+in those days? Now tell us what man you will set over us."
+
+For one moment Sanders was nonplussed. He was rapidly reviewing the
+qualifications of all the little chiefs, the headmen, and the fisher
+leaders who sat under him, and none fulfilled his requirements.
+
+In that moment of silence an agitated voice whispered in his ear, and
+Bones's lean hand clutched his sleeve.
+
+"Sir an' Excellency," breathed Bones, all of a twitter, "don't think I'm
+takin' advantage of my position, but it's the chance I've been lookin'
+for, sir. You'd do me an awful favour--you see, sir, I've got his career
+to consider----"
+
+"What on earth----" began Sanders.
+
+"Henry Hamilton Bones, sir," said Bones tremulously. "You'd set him up
+for life, sir. I must think of the child, hang it all! I know I'm a
+jolly old rotter to put my spoke in----"
+
+Sanders gently released the frenzied grip of his lieutenant, and faced
+the wondering palaver.
+
+"Know all people that this day I give to you as king one whom you shall
+call M'songuri, which means in your tongue 'The Young and the Wise,' and
+who is called in my tongue N'risu M'ilitani Tibbetti, and this one is a
+child and well beloved by my lord Tibbetti, being to him as a son, and
+by M'ilitani and by me, Sandi."
+
+He raised his hand in challenge.
+
+"Wa! Whose men are you?" he cried.
+
+"M'songuri!"
+
+The answer came in a deep-throated growl, and the assembly leapt to its
+feet.
+
+"Wa! Who rules this land?"
+
+"M'songuri!"
+
+They locked arms and stamped first with the right foot and then with the
+left, in token of their acceptance.
+
+"Take your king," said Sanders, "and build him a beautiful hut, and his
+spirit shall dwell with you. This palaver is finished."
+
+Bones was speechless all the way down river. At irregular intervals he
+would grip Sanders's hand, but he was too full for speech.
+
+Hamilton and his sister met the law-givers on the quay.
+
+"You're back sooner than I expected you, sir," said Hamilton. "Did Bones
+behave?"
+
+"Like a little gentleman," said Sanders.
+
+"Oh, Bones," Patricia broke in eagerly, "Henry has cut another tooth."
+
+Bones's nod was grave and even distant.
+
+"I will go and see His Majesty," he said. "I presume he is in the
+palace?"
+
+Hamilton stared after him.
+
+"Surely," he asked irritably, "Bones isn't sickening for measles again?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE TAMER OF BEASTS
+
+
+Native folk, at any rate, are but children of a larger growth. In the
+main, their delinquencies may be classified under the heading of
+"naughtiness." They are mischievous and passionate, and they have a
+weakness for destroying things to discover the secrets of volition. A
+too prosperous nation mystifies less fortunate people, who demand of
+their elders and rulers some solution of the mystery of their rivals'
+progress. Such a ruler, unable to offer the necessary explanation, takes
+his spears to the discovery, and sometimes discovers too much for his
+happiness.
+
+The village of Jumburu stands on the edge of the bush country, where the
+lawless men of all nations dwell. This territory is filled with fierce
+communities, banded together against a common enemy--the law. They call
+this land the B'wigini, which means "the Nationless," and Jumburu's
+importance lies in the fact that it is the outpost of order and
+discipline.
+
+In Jumburu were two brothers, O'ka and B'suru, who had usurped the
+chieftainship of their uncle, the very famous K'sungasa, "very famous,"
+since he had been in his time a man of remarkable gifts, which he still
+retained to some extent, and in consequence enjoyed what was left of
+life.
+
+He was, by all accounts, as mad as a man could be, and in circumstances
+less favourable to himself his concerned relatives would have taken him
+a long journey into the forest he loved so well, and they would have put
+out his eyes and left him to the mercy of the beasts, such being the
+method of dealing with lunacy amongst people who, all unknown to
+themselves, were eugenists of a most inflexible kind.
+
+But to leave K'sungasa to the beasts would have been equivalent to
+delivering him to the care of his dearest friends, for he had an
+affinity for the wild dwellers of the bush, and all his life he had
+lived amongst them and loved them.
+
+It is said that he could arrest the parrot in the air by a "cl'k!" and
+could bring the bird screeching and fluttering to his hand. He could
+call the shy little monkeys from the high branches where they hid, and
+even the fiercest of buffaloes would at his word come snuffling and
+nosing his brown arm.
+
+So that, when he grew weak-minded, his relatives, after a long palaver,
+decided that for once the time-honoured customs of the land should be
+overridden, and since there was no other method of treating the blind
+but that prescribed by precedent, he should be allowed to live in a
+great hut at the edge of the village with his birds and snakes and
+wild cats, and that the direction of village affairs should pass to his
+nephews.
+
+Mr. Commissioner Sanders knew all this, but did nothing. His task was to
+govern the territory, which meant to so direct affairs that the
+territory governed itself. When the fate of K'sungasa was in the
+balance, he sent word to the chief's nephews that he was somewhere in
+the neighbourhood, and that the revival of the bad old custom of
+blinding would be followed by the introduction of the bad new custom of
+hanging; but this had less effect upon the council of relatives--to whom
+Sanders's message was not transmitted--than the strange friendship which
+K'sungasa had for the forest folk.
+
+The nephews might have governed the village, exacted tribute,
+apportioned fishing rights, and administered justice for all time, but
+for the fact that there came a period of famine, when crops were bad and
+fish was scarce, and when, remarkably enough, the village of L'bini,
+distant no more than a few hours' paddling, had by a curious coincident
+raised record crops, and had, moreover, a glut of fish in their waters.
+
+There was the inevitable palaver and the inevitable solution. O'ka and
+B'suru led ten canoes to the offending village, slaughtered a few men
+and burnt a few huts. For two hours the combatants pranced and yelled
+and thrust at one another amidst a pandemonium of screaming women, and
+then Lieutenant Tibbetts dropped from the clouds with a most substantial
+platoon of Houssas, and there was a general sorting out.
+
+Sanders held a court on one of the middle islands near the Residency,
+and B'suru was sent to the Village of Irons for the term of his natural
+life. O'ka, who had fled to the bush, escaped, however, and with him a
+headman and a few followers.
+
+Lieutenant Tibbetts, who had spent two profitable days in the village of
+Jumburu, came back to the Residency a very thoughtful young man.
+
+"What is the matter with Bones?" asked Captain Hamilton.
+
+His sister smiled over her book, but offered no other comment.
+
+"Do you know, Pat?" demanded Hamilton sternly.
+
+Sanders looked at the girl with a twinkle in his grey eyes, and lit a
+cheroot. The relationships between Patricia Hamilton and Bones were a
+source of constant joy to him. Taciturn and a thought dour as he was,
+Pat would never have suspected the bubbling laughter which arose behind
+that lean brown face, unmovable and, in his moments of most intense
+enjoyment, expressionless.
+
+"Bones and I have a feud," said the girl.
+
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"Not as violent a feud as O'ka and I have, I hope?" he said.
+
+She frowned a little and looked at him anxiously.
+
+"But you don't worry about the threats of the people you have punished?"
+she asked.
+
+"I haven't punished O'ka," said Sanders, "and an expedition into the
+bush would be too expensive an affair. He has apparently settled with
+the B'wigini people. If they take up his feud, they might give trouble.
+But what is your trouble with Bones?"
+
+"You must ask him," she said.
+
+Hamilton's opportunity came next day, when Bones applied for leave.
+
+"Leave?" said Captain Hamilton incredulously. "Leave, Bones? What the
+dickens do you want leave for?"
+
+Bones, standing as stiff as a ramrod before the office table at which
+his superior sat, saluted.
+
+"Urgent private affairs, sir," he said gruffly.
+
+"But you haven't any private affairs," protested Hamilton. "Your life is
+an open book--you were bragging about that fact yesterday."
+
+"Sir and brother-officer," said Bones firmly, "a crisis has arisen in my
+young life. My word, sir, has been called into doubt by your jolly old
+sister. I desire to vindicate my honour, my reputation, an' my
+veracity."
+
+"Pat has been pulling your leg!" suggested Hamilton, but Bones shook his
+head.
+
+"Nothin' so indelicate, sir. Your revered an' lovely relative--God
+bless her jolly old heart!--expressed her doubt in _re_ leopards an'
+buffaloes. I'm goin' out, sir, into the wilds--amidst dangers, Ham, old
+feller, that only seasoned veterans like you an' me can imagine--to
+bring proof that I am not only a sportsman, but a gentleman."
+
+The timely arrival of Miss Patricia Hamilton, very beautiful in dazzling
+white, with her solar helmet perched at an angle, smote Bones to
+silence.
+
+"What have you been saying to Bones?" asked Hamilton severely.
+
+"She said----"
+
+"I said----"
+
+They began and finished together.
+
+"Bones, you're a tell-tale," accused the girl.
+
+"Go on," said Bones recklessly. "Don't spare me. I'm a liar an' a thief
+an' a murderer--don't mind me!"
+
+"I simply said that I didn't believe he shot the leopard--the one whose
+skin is in his hut."
+
+"Oh, no," said Bones, with heavy sarcasm, "I didn't shoot it--oh, no! I
+froze it to death--I poisoned it!"
+
+"But did you shoot it?" she asked.
+
+"Did I shoot it, dear old Ham?" asked Bones, with great calmness.
+
+"Did you?" asked Hamilton innocently.
+
+"Did I shoot at that leopard," Bones went on deliberately, "an' was he
+found next mornin' cold an' dead, with a smile on his naughty old
+face?"
+
+Hamilton nodded, and Bones faced the girl expectantly.
+
+"Apologize, child," he said.
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," she replied, with some heat. "Did
+Bones shoot the leopard?"
+
+She appealed to her brother.
+
+Hamilton looked from one to the other.
+
+"When the leopard was found----" he began.
+
+"Listen to this, dear old sister," murmured Bones.
+
+"When the leopard was found, with a spear in its side----"
+
+"Evidently done after death by a wanderin' cad of a native," interposed
+Bones hastily.
+
+"Be quiet, Bones," commanded the girl, and Bones shrugged his shoulders
+and obeyed.
+
+"When the leopard was found," continued Hamilton, "he was certainly
+beyond human aid, and though no bullet mark was discovered, Bones
+conclusively proved----"
+
+"One moment, dear old officer," interrupted Bones. He had seen out of
+the tail of his eye a majestic figure crossing the square.
+
+"Will you allow me to produce scientific an' expert evidence?"
+
+Hamilton assented gravely, and Bones went to the door of the orderly
+room and roared a name.
+
+"I shall produce," he said quietly, but firmly, "the evidence of one
+who enjoyed the confidence of dear old Professor What's-his-name, the
+eminent thigumy-ologist. Oh, Ali!"
+
+Ali Abid, a solemn figure, salaamed in the doorway.
+
+Not for nothing had he been factotum to a great bacteriologist before
+the demise of his master had driven him to service with a lieutenant of
+Houssas. His vocabulary smelt of the laboratory, his English was pure,
+undefiled, and unusual.
+
+"Ali, you remember my leopard?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, shaking his head, "who can forget?"
+
+"Did I kill him, Ali?" asked Bones. "Tell the lady everything."
+
+Ali bowed to the girl.
+
+"Miss or madame," he said, "the leopard (_Felis pardus_), a wild beast
+of the Felidæ family, is indigenous to forest territory. The subject in
+question--to wit, the skin thereof exhibited by Sir Bones--was
+particularly ferocious, and departed this life as a result of hunting
+conducted by aforesaid. Examination of subject after demise under most
+scientific scrutiny revealed that said leopard (_Felis pardus_) suffered
+from weak heart, and primary cause of death was diagnosed as shock
+occasioned by large 'bang' from Sir Bones's rifle."
+
+"What did I say?" asked Bones complacently.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," gasped the girl, "that you _frightened_ the
+leopard to death?"
+
+Bones spread out his hands disparagingly.
+
+"You have heard the evidence, dear old sister," he said; "there is
+nothing to add."
+
+She threw back her head and laughed until her grey eyes were swimming in
+tears.
+
+"Oh, Bones, you humbug!" she laughed.
+
+Bones drew himself up more stiffly than ever, stuck his monocle in his
+eye, and turned to his chief.
+
+"Do I understand, sir," he said, "that my leave is granted?"
+
+"Seven days," said Hamilton, and Bones swung round on his heel, knocked
+over Hamilton's stationery rack, stumbled over a chair, and strode
+gloomily from the hut.
+
+When Patricia Hamilton woke the next morning, she found a note pinned to
+her pillow.
+
+We may gloss over the impropriety of the proceedings which led to
+this phenomenon. Bones was an artist, and so small a matter as the
+proprieties did not come into his calculations.
+
+Patricia sat up in bed and read the letter.
+
+     "DEAR OLD FRIEND AND DOUTTING THOS."
+     (Bones's spelling was always perfectly disgraceful),--
+
+     "When this reaches you, when this reaches you, I shall be far, far
+     away on my long and dangerus journey. I may not come back, I may
+     not come back, for I and a faithful servant are about to penetrate
+     to the lares of the wild beasts of the forest, of the forest. I am
+     determined to wipe out the reproach which you have made. I will
+     bring back, not a dead leppard, not a dead leppard, but a live one,
+     which I shall seeze with my own hands. I may lose my life in this
+     rash and hazardus enterprise, but at least I shall vindycate my
+     honour.--Farewell, dear old Patrisia.
+
+                               "Your friend,
+
+                                    "B."
+
+"Which proves," said Hamilton, when he was shown the letter, "that Bones
+is learning to spell. It only seems yesterday when he was spelling
+'Hamilton' with three m's. By the way, how did you get this letter?"
+
+"I found it pinned to the door," said Patricia tactfully.
+
+Bones went by the shortest route to Jumburu, and was received without
+enthusiasm, for he had left a new chief to rule over a people who were
+near enough to the B'wigini to resent overmuch discipline. But his
+business was with K'sungasa, for the two days' stay which Bones had made
+in the village, and all that he had learnt of the old tamer, had been
+responsible for his reckless promise to Patricia Hamilton.
+
+He came at a critical moment, for K'sungasa, a thin and knobbly old man,
+with dim eyes and an incessant chuckle, was very near his end. He lay
+on a fine raised bed, a big yellow-eyed wild cat at his feet, a monkey
+or two shivering by the bedside, and a sprawling litter of kittens--to
+which the wild cat leapt in a tremble of rage when Bones entered the
+hut--crawling in the sunlight which flooded the hut.
+
+"Lord Tibbetti," croaked the old man, "I see you! This is a good time,
+for to-morrow I should be dead."
+
+"K'sungasa," said Bones, seating himself gingerly, and looking about for
+the snake which was usually coiled round the old man's stool, "that is
+foolish talk, for you will see many floods."
+
+"That is fine talk for the river folk," grinned the old man, "but not
+for we people of the forest, who never see flood and only little-little
+rivers. Now, I tell you, lord, that I am glad to die, because I have
+been full of mad thoughts for a long time, but now my mind is clear.
+Tell me, master, why you come."
+
+Bones explained his errand, and the old man's eyes brightened.
+
+"Lord, if I could go with you to the forest, I would bring to you many
+beautiful leopards by my magic. Now, because I love Sandi, I will do
+this for you, so that you shall know how wise and cunning I am."
+
+In the woods about the village was a wild plant, the seeds of which,
+when pounded and boiled in an earthen vessel, produced, by a rough
+method of distillation, a most pungent liquid. Abid spoke learnedly of
+_pimpinella anisum_, and probably he was right.[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: Both anise and star anise (_Illicium anisatum_) are to be
+found in the Territories, as also is a small plant which has all the
+properties (and more) of _Pimpinella anisum_. This was probably the
+plant.--AUTHOR.]
+
+Bones and his assistant made many excursions into the woods before they
+found and brought back the right plant. Fortunately it was seed-time,
+and once he was on the right track Bones had no difficulty in securing
+more than a sufficient quantity for his purpose.
+
+He made his distillation under the old man's directions, the fire
+burning in the middle of the hut. As the drops began to fall from the
+narrow neck of his retort, a fault sweet aroma filled the hut. First the
+cat, then the monkeys began to show signs of extraordinary agitation.
+Cat and kittens crouched as near the fire as they could, their heads
+craned towards the brown vessel, mewing and whimpering. Then the monkeys
+came, bright-eyed and eager.
+
+The scent brought the most unexpected beasts from every hole and crevice
+in the hut--brown rats, squirrels, a long black snake with spade-shaped
+head and diamond markings, little bush hares, a young buck, which came
+crashing through the forest and prinked timidly to the door of the hut.
+
+The old man on the bed called them all by name, and snapped his feeble
+fingers to them; but their eyes were on the retort and the crystal
+drops that trembled and fell from the lip of the narrow spout.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A week later a speechless group stood before the Residency and focussed
+their astonished gaze upon the miracle.
+
+"The miracle" was a half-grown leopard cub, vividly marked. He was
+muzzled and held in leash by a chain affixed to a stout collar, and
+Bones, a picture of smug gratification, held the end of the chain.
+
+"But how--how did you catch him?" gasped the girl.
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It is not for me, dear old friend, to tell of nights spent in the
+howlin' forest," he quavered, in the squeaky tone which invariably came
+to him when he was excited. "I'm not goin' to speak of myself. If you
+expect me to tell you how I trailed the jolly old leopard to his grisly
+lair an' fought with him single-handed, you'll be disappointed."
+
+"But did you track him to his lair?" demanded Hamilton, recovering his
+speech.
+
+"I beg of you, dear old officer, to discuss other matters," evaded Bones
+tactfully. "Here are the goods delivered, as per mine of the
+twenty-fourth instant."
+
+He put his hand to his pocket mechanically, and the cub looked up with a
+quick eager stare.
+
+"Bones, you're a wonderful fellow," said Sanders quietly.
+
+Bones bowed.
+
+"And now," he said, "if you'll excuse me, I'll take my little friend to
+his new home."
+
+Before they realized what he was doing, he had slipped off the chain.
+Even Sanders stepped back and dropped his hand to the automatic pistol
+he carried in his hip pocket.
+
+But Bones, unconcerned, whistled and marched off to his hut, and the
+great cat followed humbly at his heels.
+
+That same night Bones strode across from his hut to the Residency,
+resolved upon a greater adventure yet. He would go out under the
+admiring eyes of Patricia Hamilton, and would return from the Residency
+woods a veritable Pied Piper, followed by a trail of forest denizens.
+
+In his pocket was a quart bottle, and his clothes reeked with the scent
+of wild aniseed. As a matter of fact, his secret would have been out the
+moment he entered Sanders's dining-room, but it so happened that his
+programme was doomed to interruption.
+
+He was half-way across the square when a dark figure rose from the
+ground and a harsh voice grunted "Kill!"
+
+He saw the flash of the spear in the starlight and leapt aside. A hand
+clutched at his jacket, but he wrenched himself free, leaving the
+garment in his assailant's hands.
+
+He was unarmed, and there was nothing left but flight.
+
+Sanders heard his yell, and sprang out to the darkness of the verandah
+as Bones flew up the steps.
+
+He saw the two men racing in pursuit, and fired twice. One man fell, the
+other swerved and was lost in the shadows.
+
+An answering shot came from the Houssa sentry at the far end of the
+square. Sanders saw a man running, and fired again, and again missed.
+
+Then out of the darkness blundered Ali Abid, his face grey with fear.
+
+"Sir," he gasped, "wild animal (_Felis pardus_) has divested muzzlement
+and proper restraint, and is chasing various subjects outrageously."
+
+Even as he spoke a fourth figure sped across the ground before the
+Residency, so close that they could see the bundle he carried under his
+arm.
+
+"My jacket!" roared Bones. "Hi, stop him! Good Lord!"
+
+Swift on the heels of the flying man came a streak of yellow fur....
+
+Whether O'ka of the Jumburu outpaced the leopard, or the leopard
+overtook O'ka, is not known, but until the rains came and washed away
+the scent of crude aniseed, Bones dared not leave his hut by night for
+fear of the strange beasts that came snuffling at his hut, or sat in
+expectant and watchful circles about his dwelling, howling dismally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MERCENARIES
+
+
+There was a large brown desk in Sanders's study, a desk the edges of
+which had been worn yellow with constant rubbing. It was a very tidy
+desk, with two rows of books neatly grouped on the left and on the
+right, and held in place by brass rails. There were three tiers of wire
+baskets, a great white blotting-pad, a silver inkstand and four
+clean-looking pens.
+
+Lately, there had appeared a glass vase filled with flowers which were
+daily renewed. Except on certain solemn occasions, none intruded into
+this holy of holies. It is true that a change had been brought about by
+the arrival of Patricia Hamilton, for she had been accorded permission
+to use the study as she wished, and she it was who had introduced the
+floral decorations.
+
+Yet, such was the tradition of sanctuary which enveloped the study, that
+neither Captain Hamilton, her brother, nor Bones, her slave, had ever
+ventured to intrude thither in search of her, and if by chance they came
+to the door to speak to her, they unaccountably lowered their voices.
+
+On a certain summer morning, Hamilton sat at the desk, a stern and sober
+figure, and Bones, perspiring and rattled, sat on the edge of a chair
+facing him.
+
+The occasion was a solemn one, for Bones was undergoing his examination
+in subjects "X" and "Y" for promotion to the rank of Captain. The
+particular subject under discussion was "Map Reading and Field
+Sketching," and the inquisition was an oral one.
+
+"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton gravely, "you will please define a
+Base Line."
+
+Bones pushed back the hair straggling over his forehead, and blinked
+rapidly in an effort of memory.
+
+"A base line, dear old officer?" he repeated. "A base line, dear old
+Ham----"
+
+"Restrain your endearing terms," said Hamilton, "you won't get any extra
+marks for 'em."
+
+"A base line?" mused Bones; then, "Whoop! I've got it! God bless your
+jolly old soul! I thought I'd foozled it. A base line," he said loudly,
+"is the difference of level between two adjacent contours. How's that,
+umpire?"
+
+"Wrong," said Hamilton; "you're describing a Vertical Interval."
+
+Bones glared at him.
+
+"Are you sure, dear old chap?" he demanded truculently. "Have a look at
+the book, jolly old friend, your poor old eyes ain't what they used to
+be----"
+
+"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton in ponderous reproof, "you are
+behaving very strangely."
+
+"Look here, dear old Ham," wheedled Bones "can't you pretend you asked
+me what a Vertical Interval was?"
+
+Hamilton reached round to find something to throw, but this was
+Sanders's study.
+
+"You have a criminal mind, Bones," he said helplessly. "Now get on with
+it. What are 'Hachures'?"
+
+"Hachures?" said Bones, shutting his eye. "Hachures? Now I know what
+Hachures are. A lot of people would think they were chickens, but I
+know ... they're a sort of line ... when you're drawing a hill ...
+wiggly-waggly lines ... you know the funny things ... a sort of...."
+Bones made mysterious and erratic gestures in the air, "shading ...
+water, dear old friend."
+
+"Are you feeling faint?" asked Hamilton, jumping up in alarm.
+
+"No, silly ass ... shadings ... direction of water--am I right, sir?"
+
+"Not being a thought-reader I can't visualize your disordered mind,"
+said Hamilton, "but Hachures are the conventional method of representing
+hill features by shading in short vertical lines to indicate the slope
+and the water flow. I gather that you have a hazy idea of what the
+answer should be."
+
+"I thank you, dear old sir, for that generous tribute to my grasp
+of military science," said Bones. "An' now proceed to the next
+torture--which will you have, sir, rack or thumbscrew?--oh, thank
+you, Horace, I'll have a glass of boiling oil."
+
+"Shut up talking to yourself," growled Hamilton, "and tell me what is
+meant by 'Orienting a Map'?"
+
+"Turning it to the east," said Bones promptly. "Next, sir."
+
+"What is meant by 'Orienting a Map'?" asked Hamilton patiently.
+
+"I've told you once," said Bones defiantly.
+
+"Orienting a Map," said Hamilton, "as I have explained to you a thousand
+times, means setting your map or plane-table so that the north line lies
+north."
+
+"In that case, sir," said Bones firmly, "the east line would be east,
+and I claim to have answered the question to your entire satisfaction."
+
+"Continue to claim," snarled Hamilton. "I shall mark you zero for that
+answer."
+
+"Make it one," pleaded Bones. "Be a sport, dear old Ham--I've found a
+new fishin' pool."
+
+Hamilton hesitated.
+
+"There never are any fish in the pools you find," he said dubiously.
+"Anyway, I'll reserve my decision until I've made a cast or two."
+
+They adjourned for tiffin soon after.
+
+"How did you do, Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton.
+
+"Fine," said Bones enthusiastically; "I simply bowled over every
+question that your dear old brother asked. In fact, Ham admitted that I
+knew much more about some things than he did."
+
+"What I said," corrected Hamilton, "was that your information on certain
+subjects was so novel that I doubted whether even the staff college
+shared it."
+
+"It's the same thing," said Bones.
+
+"You should try him on military history," suggested Sanders dryly. "I've
+just been hearing from Bosambo----"
+
+Bones coughed and blushed.
+
+"The fact is, sir an' Excellency," he confessed, "I was practisin' on
+Bosambo. You mightn't be aware of the fact, but I like to hear myself
+speak----"
+
+"No!" gasped Hamilton in amazement, "you're wronging yourself, Bones!"
+
+"What I mean, sir," Bones went on with dignity, "is that if I lecture
+somebody on a subject I remember what I've said."
+
+"Always providing that you understand what you're saying," suggested
+Hamilton.
+
+"Anyway," said Sanders, with his quiet smile, "Bones has filled Bosambo
+with a passionate desire to emulate Napoleon, and Bosambo has been
+making tentative inquiries as to whether he can raise an Old Guard or
+enlist a mercenary army."
+
+"I flatter myself----" began Bones.
+
+"Why not?" said Hamilton, rising. "It's the only chance you'll have of
+hearing something complimentary about yourself."
+
+"_I_ believe in you, Bones," said a smiling Patricia. "I think you're
+really wonderful, and that Ham is a brute."
+
+"I'll never, never contradict you, dear Miss Patricia," said Bones; "an'
+after the jolly old Commissioner has gone----"
+
+"You're not going away again, are you?" she asked, turning to Sanders.
+"Why, you have only just come back from the interior."
+
+There was genuine disappointment in her eyes, and Sanders experienced a
+strange thrill the like of which he had never known before.
+
+"Yes," he said with a nod. "There is a palaver of sorts in the Morjaba
+country--the most curious palaver I have ever been called upon to hold."
+
+And indeed he spoke the truth.
+
+Beyond the frontiers of the Akasava, and separated from all the other
+Territories by a curious bush belt which ran almost in a straight line
+for seventy miles, were the people of Morjaba. They were a folk isolated
+from territorial life, and Sanders saw them once every year and no more
+frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers of taxes
+and law-abiding, having quarrels with none. The bush (reputedly the
+abode of ghosts) was, save at one point, impenetrable. Nature had
+plaited a natural wall on one side, and had given the tribe the
+protection of high mountains to the north and a broad swamp to the
+west.
+
+The fierce storms of passion and hate which burst upon the river at
+intervals and sent thousands of spears to a blooding, were scarcely
+echoed in this sanctuary-land. The marauders of the Great King's country
+to the north never fetched across the smooth moraine of the mountains,
+and the evil people of The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp were held back by the
+treacherous bogland wherein, _cala-cala_, a whole army had been
+swallowed up.
+
+Thus protected, the Morjabian folk grew fat and rich. The land was a
+veritable treasure of Nature, and it is a fact that in the dialect they
+speak, there is no word which means "hunger."[5]
+
+[Footnote 5: It is as curious a fact that amongst the majority of
+cannibal people there is no equivalent for "thank you."--E. W.]
+
+Yet the people of the Morjaba were not without their crises.
+
+S'kobi, the stout chief, held a great court which was attended by ten
+thousand people, for at that court was to be concluded for ever the feud
+between the M'gimi and the M'joro--a feud which went back for the
+greater part of fifty years.
+
+The M'gimi were the traditional warrior tribe, the bearers of arms, and,
+as their name ("The High Lookers") implied, the proudest and most
+exclusive of the people. For every man was the descendant of a chief,
+and it was "easier for fish to walk," as the saying goes, than for a
+man of the M'joro ("The Diggers") to secure admission to the caste.
+Three lateral cuts on either cheek was the mark of the M'gimi--wounds
+made, upon the warrior's initiation to the order, with the razor-edged
+blade of a killing-spear. They lived apart in three camps to the number
+of six thousand men, and for five years from the hour of their
+initiation they neither married nor courted. The M'gimi turned their
+backs to women, and did not suffer their presence in their camps. And if
+any man departed from this austere rule he was taken to the Breaking
+Tree, his four limbs were fractured, and he was hoisted to the lower
+branches, between which a litter was swung, and his regiment sat beneath
+the tree neither eating, drinking nor sleeping until he died. Sometimes
+this was a matter of days. As for the woman who had tempted his eye and
+his tongue, she was a witness.
+
+Thus the M'gimi preserved their traditions of austerity. They were
+famous walkers and jumpers. They threw heavy spears and fought great
+sham-fights, and they did every violent exercise save till the ground.
+
+This was the sum and substance of the complaint which had at last come
+to a head.
+
+S'gono, the spokesman of The Diggers, was a headman of the inner lands,
+and spoke with bitter prejudice, since his own son had been rejected by
+the M'gimi captains as being unworthy.
+
+"Shall we men dig and sow for such as these?" he asked. "Now give a
+judgment, King! Every moon we must take the best of our fruit and the
+finest of our fish. Also so many goats and so much salt, and it is
+swallowed up."
+
+"Yet if I send them away," said the king, "how shall I protect this land
+against the warriors of the Akasava and the evil men of the swamp? Also
+of the Ochori, who are four days' march across good ground?"
+
+"Lord King," said S'gono, "are there no M'gimi amongst us who have
+passed from the camp and have their women and their children? May not
+these take the spear again? And are not we M'joro folk men? By my life!
+I will raise as many spears from The Diggers and captain them with
+M'joro men--this I could do between the moons and none would say that
+you were not protected. For we are men as bold as they."
+
+The king saw that the M'gimi party was in the minority. Moreover, he had
+little sympathy with the warrior caste, for his beginnings were basely
+rooted in the soil, and two of his sons had no more than scraped into
+the M'gimi.
+
+"This thing shall be done," said the king, and the roar of approval
+which swept up the little hillock on which he sat was his reward.
+
+Sanders, learning something of these doings, had come in haste, moving
+across the Lower Akasava by a short cut, risking the chagrin of certain
+chiefs and friends who would be shocked and mortified by his apparent
+lack of courtesy in missing the ceremonious call which was their due.
+
+But his business was very urgent, otherwise he would not have travelled
+by Nobolama--The-River-that-comes-and-goes.
+
+He was fortunate in that he found deep water for the _Wiggle_ as far as
+the edge of this pleasant land. A two days' trek through the forest
+brought him to the great city of Morjaba. In all the Territories there
+was no such city as this, for it stretched for miles on either hand, and
+indeed was one of the most densely populated towns within a radius of
+five hundred miles.
+
+S'kobi came waddling to meet his governor with maize, plucked in haste
+from the gardens he passed, and salt, grabbed at the first news of
+Sanders's arrival, in his big hands. These he extended as he puffed to
+where Sanders sat at the edge of the city.
+
+"Lord," he wheezed, "none came with news of this great honour, or my
+young men would have met you, and my maidens would have danced the road
+flat with their feet. Take!"
+
+Sanders extended both palms and received the tribute of salt and corn,
+and solemnly handed the crushed mess to his orderly.
+
+"O S'kobi," he said, "I came swiftly to make a secret palaver with you,
+and my time is short."
+
+"Lord, I am your man," said S'kobi, and signalled his councillors and
+elder men to a distance.
+
+Sanders was in some difficulty to find a beginning.
+
+"You know, S'kobi, that I love your people as my children," he said,
+"for they are good folk who are faithful to government and do ill to
+none."
+
+"Wa!" said S'kobi.
+
+"Also you know that spearmen and warriors I do not love, for spears are
+war and warriors are great lovers of fighting."
+
+"Lord, you speak the truth," said the other, nodding, "therefore in this
+land I will have made a law that there shall be no spears, save those
+which sleep in the shadow of my hut. Now well I know why you have come
+to make this palaver, for you have heard with your beautiful long ears
+that I have sent away my fighting regiments."
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"You speak truly, my friend," he said, and S'kobi beamed.
+
+"Six times a thousand spears I had--and, lord, spears grow no corn.
+Rather are they terrible eaters. And now I have sent them to their
+villages, and at the next moon they should have burnt their fine
+war-knives, but for a certain happening. We folk of Morjaba have no
+enemies, and we do good to all. Moreover, lord, as you know, we have
+amongst us many folk of the Isisi, of the Akasava and the N'gombi, also
+men from the Great King's land beyond the High Rocks, and the little
+folk from The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp. Therefore, who shall attack us
+since we have kinsmen of all amongst us?"
+
+Sanders regarded the jovial king with a sad little smile.
+
+"Have I done well by all men?" he asked quietly. "Have I not governed
+the land so that punishment comes swiftly to those who break the law?
+Yet, S'kobi, do not the Akasava and the Isisi, the N'gombi and the Lower
+River folk take their spears against me? Now I tell you this which I
+have discovered. In all beasts great and little there are mothers who
+have young ones and fathers who fight that none shall harass the
+mother."
+
+"Lord, this is the way of life," said S'kobi.
+
+"It is the way of the Bigger Life," said Sanders, "and greatly the way
+of man-life. For the women bring children to the land and the men sit
+with their spears ready to fight all who would injure their women. And
+so long as life lasts, S'kobi, the women will bear and the men will
+guard; it is the way of Nature, and you shall not take from men the
+desire for slaughter until you have dried from the hearts of women the
+yearning for children."
+
+"Lord," said S'kobi, a fat man and easily puzzled, "what shall be the
+answer to this strange riddle you set me?"
+
+"Only this," said Sanders rising, "I wish peace in this land, but there
+can be no peace between the leopard who has teeth and claws and the
+rabbit who has neither tooth nor claw. Does the leopard fight the lion
+or the lion the leopard? They live in peace, for each is terrible in
+his way, and each fears the other. I tell you this, that you live in
+love with your neighbours not because of your kindness, but because of
+your spears. Call them back to your city, S'kobi."
+
+The chief's large face wrinkled in a frown.
+
+"Lord," he said, "that cannot be, for these men have marched away from
+my country to find a people who will feed them, for they are too proud
+to dig the ground."
+
+"Oh, damn!" said Sanders in despair, and went back the way he came,
+feeling singularly helpless.
+
+The Odyssey of the discarded army of the Morjaba has yet to be written.
+Paradoxically enough, its primary mission was a peaceful one, and when
+it found first the frontiers of the Akasava and then the river borders
+of the Isisi closed against it, it turned to the north in an endeavour to
+find service under the Great King, beyond the mountains. Here it was
+repulsed and its pacific intentions doubted. The M'gimi formed a camp a
+day's march from the Ochori border, and were on the thin line which
+separates unemployment from anarchy when Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori,
+who had learnt of their presence, came upon the scene.
+
+Bosambo was a born politician. He had the sense of opportunity and that
+strange haze of hopeful but indefinite purpose which is the foundation
+of the successful poet and statesman, but which, when unsuccessfully
+developed, is described as "temperament."
+
+Bones, paying a business call upon the Ochori, found a new township
+grown up on the forest side of the city. He also discovered evidence of
+discontent in Bosambo's harassed people, who had been called upon to
+provide fish and meal for the greater part of six thousand men who were
+too proud to work.
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, "I have often desired such an army as this, for
+my Ochori fighters are few. Now, lord, with these men I can hold the
+Upper River for your King, and Sandi and none dare speak against him.
+Thus would N'poloyani, who is your good friend, have done."
+
+"But who shall feed these men, Bosambo?" demanded Bones hastily.
+
+"All things are with God," replied Bosambo piously.
+
+Bones collected all the available information upon the matter and took
+it back to headquarters.
+
+"H'm," said Sanders when he had concluded his recital, "if it were any
+other man but Bosambo ... you would require another battalion,
+Hamilton."
+
+"But what has Bosambo done?" asked Patricia Hamilton, admitted to the
+council.
+
+"He is being Napoleonic," said Sanders, with a glance at the youthful
+authority on military history, and Bones squirmed and made strange
+noises. "We will see how it works out. How on earth is he going to feed
+them, Bones?"
+
+"Exactly the question I asked, sir an' Excellency," said Bones in
+triumph. "'Why, you silly old ass----'"
+
+"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the startled Sanders.
+
+"That is what I said to Bosambo, sir," explained Bones hastily. "'Why,
+you silly old ass,' I said, 'how are you going to grub 'em?' 'Lord
+Bones,' said Bosambo, 'that's the jolly old problem that I'm workin'
+out.'"
+
+How Bosambo worked out his problem may be gathered.
+
+"There is some talk of an Akasava rising," said Sanders at breakfast one
+morning. "I don't know why this should be, for my information is that
+the Akasava folk are fairly placid."
+
+"Where does the news come from, sir?" asked Hamilton.
+
+"From the Isisi king--he's in a devil of a funk, and has begged Bosambo
+to send him help."
+
+That help was forthcoming in the shape of Bosambo's new army, which
+arrived on the outskirts of the Isisi city and sat in idleness for a
+month, at the end of which time the people of the Isisi represented to
+their king that they would, on the whole, prefer war to a peace which
+put them on half rations in order that six thousand proud warriors might
+live on the fat of the land.
+
+The M'gimi warriors marched back to the Ochori, each man carrying a
+month's supply of maize and salt, wrung from the resentful peasants of
+the Isisi.
+
+Three weeks after, Bosambo sent an envoy to the King of the Akasava.
+
+"Let no man know this, Gubara, lest it come to the ears of Sandi, and
+you, who are very innocent, be wrongly blamed," said the envoy solemnly.
+"Thus says Bosambo: It has come to my ears that the N'gombi are secretly
+arming and will very soon send a forest of spears against the Akasava.
+Say this to Gubara, that because my stomach is filled with sorrow I will
+help him. Because I am very powerful, because of my friendship with
+Bonesi and his cousin, N'poloyani, who is also married to Bonesi's aunt,
+I have a great army which I will send to the Akasava, and when the
+N'gombi hear of this they will send away their spears and there will be
+peace."
+
+The Akasava chief, a nervous man with the memory of all the discomforts
+which follow tribal wars, eagerly assented. For two months Bosambo's
+army sat down like a cloud of locusts and ate the Akasava to a condition
+bordering upon famine.
+
+At the end of that time they marched to the N'gombi country, news having
+been brought by Bosambo's messengers that the Great King was crossing
+the western mountains with a terrible army to seize the N'gombi forests.
+How long this novel method of provisioning his army might have continued
+may only be guessed, for in the midst of Bosambo's plans for maintaining
+an army at the expense of his neighbours there was a great happening in
+the Morjaba country.
+
+S'kobi, the fat chief, had watched the departure of his warriors with
+something like relief. He was gratified, moreover (native-like), by the
+fact that he had confounded Sanders. But when the Commissioner had gone
+and S'kobi remembered all that he had said, a great doubt settled like a
+pall upon his mind. For three days he sat, a dejected figure, on the
+high carved stool of state before his house, and at the end of that time
+he summoned S'gono, the M'joro.
+
+"S'gono," said he, "I am troubled in my stomach because of certain
+things which our lord Sandi has said."
+
+Thereupon he told the plebeian councillor much of what Sanders had said.
+
+"And now my M'gimi are with Bosambo of the Ochori, and he sells them to
+this people and that for so much treasure and food."
+
+"Lord," said S'gono, "is my word nothing? Did I not say that I would
+raise spears more wonderful than the M'gimi? Give me leave, King, and
+you shall find an army that shall grow in a night. I, S'gono, son of
+Mocharlabili Yoka, say this!"
+
+So messengers went forth to all the villages of the Morjaba calling the
+young men to the king's hut, and on the third week there stood on a
+plateau beneath the king's palaver house a most wonderful host.
+
+"Let them march across the plain and make the Dance of Killing," said
+the satisfied king, and S'gono hesitated.
+
+"Lord King," he pleaded, "these are new soldiers, and they are not yet
+wise in the ways of warriors. Also they will not take the chiefs I gave
+them, but have chosen their own, so that each company have two leaders
+who say evil things of one another."
+
+S'kobi opened his round eyes.
+
+"The M'gimi did not do this," he said dubiously, "for when their
+captains spoke they leapt first with one leg and then with the other,
+which was beautiful to see and very terrifying to our enemies."
+
+"Lord," begged the agitated S'gono, "give me the space of a moon and
+they shall leap with both legs and dance in a most curious manner."
+
+A spy retailed this promise to a certain giant chief of the Great King
+who was sitting on the Morjaba slopes of the mountains with four
+thousand spears, awaiting a favourable moment to ford the river which
+separated him from the rich lands of the northern Morjaba.
+
+This giant heard the tidings with interest.
+
+"Soon they shall leap without heads," he said, "for without the
+M'gimi they are little children. For twenty seasons we have waited,
+and now comes our fine night. Go you, B'furo, to the Chief of
+The-Folk-beyond-the-Swamp and tell him that when he sees three fires on
+this mountain he shall attack across the swamp by the road which he
+knows."
+
+It was a well-planned campaign which the Great King's generals and the
+Chief of The-People-beyond-the-Marsh had organized. With the passing of
+the warrior caste the enemies of the Morjaba had moved swiftly. The path
+across the swamp had been known for years, but the M'gimi had had one of
+their camps so situated that no enemy could debouch across, and had so
+ordered their dispositions that the northern river boundary was
+automatically safeguarded.
+
+Now S'gono was a man of the fields, a grower and seller of maize and a
+breeder of goats. And he had planned his new army as he would plan a new
+garden, on the basis that the nearer the army was to the capital, the
+easier it was to maintain. In consequence the river-ford was unguarded,
+and there were two thousand spears across the marshes before a scared
+minister of war apprehended any danger.
+
+He flung his new troops against the Great King's chief captain in a
+desperate attempt to hold back the principal invader. At the same time,
+more by luck than good generalship, he pushed the evil people of the
+marsh back to their native element.
+
+For two days the Morjaba fought desperately if unskilfully against the
+seasoned troops of the Great King, while messengers hurried east and
+south, seeking help.
+
+Bosambo's intelligence department may have shown remarkable prescience
+in unearthing the plot against the peace and security of the Morjaba, or
+it may have been (and this is Sanders's theory) that Bosambo was on his
+way to the Morjaba with a cock and bull story of imminent danger. He was
+on the frontier when the king's messenger came, and Bosambo returned
+with the courier to treat in person.
+
+"Five thousand loads of corn I will give you, Bosambo," said the king,
+"also a hundred bags of salt. Also two hundred women who shall be slaves
+in your house."
+
+There was some bargaining, for Bosambo had no need of slaves, but
+urgently wanted goats. In the end he brought up his hirelings, and the
+people of the Morjaba city literally fell on the necks of the returned
+M'gimi.
+
+The enemy had forced the northern defences and were half-way to the city
+when the M'gimi fell upon their flank.
+
+The giant chief of the Great King's army saw the ordered ranks of the
+old army driving in his flank, and sent for his own captain.
+
+"Go swiftly to our lord, the King, and say that I am a dead man."
+
+He spoke no more than the truth, for he fell at the hand of Bosambo, who
+made a mental resolve to increase his demand on the herds of S'kobi in
+consequence.
+
+For the greater part of a month Bosambo was a welcome visitor, and at
+the end of that time he made his preparations to depart.
+
+Carriers and herdsmen drove or portered his reward back to the Ochori
+country, marching one day ahead of the main body.
+
+The M'gimi were summoned for the march at dawn, but at dawn Bosambo
+found himself alone on the plateau, save for the few Ochori headmen who
+had accompanied him on his journey.
+
+"Lord," said S'kobi, "my fine soldiers do not go with you, for I have
+seen how wise is Sandi who is my father and my mother."
+
+Bosambo choked, and as was usual in moments of intense emotion, found
+refuge in English.
+
+"Dam' nigger!" he said wrathfully, "I bring um army, I feed um, I keep
+um proper--you pinch um! Black t'ief! Pig! You bad feller! I speak you
+bad for N'poloyani--him fine feller."
+
+"Lord," said the uncomprehending king, "I see that you are like Sandi
+for you speak his tongue. He also said 'Dam' very loudly. I think it is
+the word white folk say when they are happy."
+
+Bosambo met Bones hurrying to the scene of the fighting, and told his
+tale.
+
+"Lord," said he in conclusion, "what was I to do, for you told nothing
+of the ways of N'poloyani when his army was stolen from him. Tell me
+now, Tibbetti, what this man would have done."
+
+But Bones shook his head severely.
+
+"This I cannot tell you, Bosambo," he said, "for if I do you will tell
+others, and my lord N'poloyani will never forgive me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WATERS OF MADNESS
+
+
+Unexpected things happen in the Territories which Mr. Commissioner
+Sanders rules. As for example: Bones had gone down to the beach to "take
+the mail." This usually meant no more than receiving a mail-bag wildly
+flung from a dancing surf-boat. On this occasion Bones was surprised to
+discover that the boat had beached and had landed, not only the mail,
+but a stranger with his baggage.
+
+He was a clean-shaven, plump man, in spotless white, and he greeted
+Bones with a friendly nod. "Morning!" he said. "I've got your mail."
+
+Bones extended his hand and took the bag without evidence of any
+particular enthusiasm.
+
+"Sanders about?" asked the stranger.
+
+"Mr. Sanders is in residence, sir," said Bones, ponderously polite.
+
+The other laughed. "Show the way," he said briskly.
+
+Bones looked at the new-comer from the ventilator of his pith helmet to
+the soles of his pipe-clayed shoes. "Excuse me, dear old sir," he said,
+"have I the honour of addressin' the Secretary of State for War?"
+
+"No," answered the other in surprise. "What made you think that?"
+
+"Because," said Bones, with rising wrath, "he's the only fellow that
+needn't say 'please' to me."
+
+The man roared with laughter. "Sorry," he said. "_Please_ show me the
+way."
+
+"Follow me, sir," said Bones.
+
+Sanders was not "in residence," being, in fact, inspecting some
+recent--and native--repairs to the boilers of the _Zaire_.
+
+The stranger drew up a chair on the stoep without invitation and seated
+himself. He looked around. Patricia Hamilton was at the far end of the
+stoep, reading a book. She had glanced up just long enough to note and
+wonder at the new arrival. "Deuced pretty girl that," said the stranger,
+lighting a cigar.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Bones.
+
+"I say that is a deuced pretty girl," said the stranger.
+
+"And you're a deuced brute, dear sir," said Bones, "but hitherto I have
+not commented on the fact."
+
+The man looked up quickly. "What are you here," he asked--"a clerk or
+something?"
+
+Bones did not so much as flush. "Oh, no," he said sweetly. "I am an
+officer of Houssas--rank, lieutenant. My task is to tame the uncivilized
+beast an' entertain the civilized pig with a selection of music. Would
+you like to hear our gramophone?"
+
+The new-comer frowned. What brilliant effort of persiflage was to follow
+will never be known, for at that moment came Sanders.
+
+The stranger rose and produced a pocket-book, from which he extracted a
+card and a letter. "Good morning, Commissioner!" he said. "My name's
+Corklan--P. T. Corklan, of Corklan, Besset and Lyons."
+
+"Indeed," said Sanders.
+
+"I've got a letter for you," said the man.
+
+Sanders took the note, opened it, and read. It bore the neat signature
+of an Under-Secretary of State and the embossed heading of the
+Extra-Territorial Office, and it commended Mr. P. T. Corklan to Mr.
+Commissioner Sanders, and requested him to let Mr. Corklan pass without
+let or hindrance through the Territories, and to render him every
+assistance "compatible with exigencies of the Service" in his "inquiries
+into sugar production from the sweet potato."
+
+"You should have taken this to the Administrator," said Sanders, "and it
+should bear his signature."
+
+"There's the letter," said the man shortly. "If that's not enough, and
+the signature of the Secretary of State isn't sufficient, I'm going
+straight back to England and tell him so."
+
+"You may go to the devil and tell him so," said Sanders calmly; "but
+you do not pass into these Territories until I have received telegraphic
+authority from my chief. Bones, take this man to your hut, and let your
+people do what they can for him." And he turned and walked into the
+house.
+
+"You shall hear about this," said Mr. Corklan, picking up his baggage.
+
+"This way, dear old pilgrim," said Bones.
+
+"Who's going to carry my bag?"
+
+"Your name escapes me," said Bones, "but, if you'll glance at your
+visitin' card, you will find the name of the porter legibly inscribed."
+
+Sanders compressed the circumstances into a hundred-word telegram worded
+in his own economical style.
+
+It happened that the Administrator was away on a shooting trip, and it
+was his cautious secretary who replied--
+
+"Administration to Sanders.--Duplicate authority here. Let Corklan
+proceed at own risk. Warn him dangers."
+
+"You had better go along and tell him," said Sanders. "He can leave at
+once, and the sooner the better."
+
+Bones delivered the message. The man was sitting on his host's bed, and
+the floor was covered with cigar ash. Worst abomination of all, was a
+large bottle of whisky, which he had produced from one of his bags, and
+a reeking glass, which he had produced from Bones's sideboard.
+
+"So I can go to-night, can I?" said Mr. Corklan. "That's all right. Now,
+what about conveyance, hey?"
+
+Bones had now reached the stage where he had ceased to be annoyed, and
+when he found some interest in the situation. "What sort of conveyance
+would you like, sir?" he asked curiously.
+
+(If you can imagine him pausing half a bar before every "sir," you may
+value its emphasis.)
+
+"Isn't there a steamer I can have?" demanded the man. "Hasn't Sanders
+got a Government steamer?"
+
+"Pardon my swooning," said Bones, sinking into a chair.
+
+"Well, how am I going to get up?" asked the man.
+
+"Are you a good swimmer?" demanded Bones innocently.
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Corklan, "you aren't a bad fellow. I rather like
+you."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Bones simply.
+
+"I rather like you," repeated Mr. Corklan. "You might give me a little
+help."
+
+"It is very unlikely that I shall," said Bones. "But produce your
+proposition, dear old adventurer."
+
+"That is just what I am," said the other. He bit off the end of another
+cigar and lit it with the glowing butt of the old one. "I have knocked
+about all over the world, and I have done everything. I've now a chance
+of making a fortune. There is a tribe here called the N'gombi. They
+live in a wonderful rubber country, and I am told that they have got all
+the ivory in the world, and stacks of rubber hidden away."
+
+Now, it is a fact--and Bones was surprised to hear it related by the
+stranger--that the N'gombi are great misers and hoarders of elephant
+tusks. For hundreds of years they have traded ivory and rubber, and
+every village has its secret storehouse. The Government had tried for
+years to wheedle the N'gombi into depositing their wealth in some State
+store, for riches mean war sooner or later. They lived in great
+forests--the word N'gombi means "interior"--in lands full of elephants
+and rich in rubber trees.
+
+"You are a regular information bureau," said Bones admiringly. "But what
+has this to do with your inquiry into the origin of the candy tree?"
+
+The man smoked in silence for awhile, then he pulled from his pocket a
+big map. Again Bones was surprised, because the map he produced was the
+official map of the Territories. He traced the river with his fat
+forefinger.
+
+"Here is the N'gombi country from the east bank of the Isisi, and this
+is all forest, and a rubber tree to every ten square yards."
+
+"I haven't counted them," said Bones, "but I'll take your word."
+
+"Now, what does this mean?" Mr. Corklan indicated a twisting line of
+dots and dashes which began at the junction of the Isisi River and the
+Great River, and wound tortuously over five hundred miles of country
+until it struck the Sigi River, which runs through Spanish territory.
+"What is that?" he asked.
+
+"That, or those," said Bones, "are the footprints of the mighty swoozlum
+bird that barks with its eyes an' lives on buttered toast an' hardware."
+
+"I will tell you what I know it is," said the man, looking up and
+looking Bones straight in the eye--"it is one of those secret rivers you
+are always finding in these 'wet' countries. The natives tell you about
+'em, but you never find 'em. They are rivers that only exist about once
+in a blue moon, when the river is very high and the rains are very
+heavy. Now, down in the Spanish territory"--he touched Bones's knee with
+great emphasis--"they tell me that their end of the secret river is in
+flood."
+
+"They will tell you anything in the Spanish territory," said Bones
+pleasantly. "They'd tell you your jolly old fortune if you'd cross their
+palms with silver."
+
+"What about your end?" asked the man, ignoring the scepticism of his
+host.
+
+"Our end?" said Bones. "Well, you will find out for yourself. I'd hate
+to disappoint you."
+
+"Now, how am I going up?" asked the man after a pause.
+
+"You can hire a canoe, and live on the land, unless you have brought
+stores."
+
+The man chuckled. "I've brought no stores. Here, I will show you
+something," he said. "You are a very good fellow." He opened his bag and
+took out a tight packet which looked like thin skins. There must have
+been two or three hundred of them. "That's my speciality," he said. He
+nipped the string that tied them together, stripped one off, and,
+putting his lips to one end, blew. The skin swelled up like a toy
+balloon. "Do you know what that is?"
+
+"No, I cannot say I do," said Bones.
+
+"You have heard of Soemmering's process?"
+
+Bones shook his head.
+
+"Do you know what decimal 1986 signifies?"
+
+"You've got me guessing, my lad," said Bones admiringly.
+
+The other chuckled, threw the skins into his bag, and closed it with a
+snap. "That's my little joke," he said. "All my friends tell me it will
+be the death of me one of these days. I like to puzzle people"--he
+smiled amiably and triumphantly in Bones's face--"I like to tell them
+the truth in such a way they don't understand it. If they understood
+it--Heavens, there'd be the devil to pay!"
+
+"You are an ingenious fellow," said Bones, "but I don't like your face.
+You will forgive my frankness, dear old friend."
+
+"Faces aren't fortunes," said the other complacently, "and I am going
+out of this country with money sticking to me."
+
+"I'm sorry for you," said Bones, shaking his head; "I hate to see
+fellows with illusions."
+
+He reported all that occurred to the Commissioner, and Sanders was a
+little worried.
+
+"I wish I knew what his game is," he said; "I'd stop him like a shot,
+but I can't very well in the face of the Administrator's wire. Anyway,
+he will get nothing out of the N'gombi. I've tried every method to make
+the beggars bank their surpluses, and I have failed."
+
+"He has got to come back this way, at any rate," said Hamilton, "and I
+cannot see that he will do much harm."
+
+"What is the rest of his baggage like?"
+
+"He has a case of things that look like concave copper plates, sir,"
+said Bones, "very thin copper, but copper. Then he has two or three
+copper pipes, and that is about his outfit."
+
+Mr. Corklan was evidently no stranger to the coast, and Bones, who
+watched the man's canoe being loaded that afternoon, and heard his
+fluent observations on the slackness of his paddlers, realized that his
+acquaintance with Central Africa was an extensive one. He cursed in
+Swahili and Portuguese, and his language was forcible and impolite.
+"Well," he said at last, "I'll be getting along. I'll make a fishing
+village for the night, and I ought to reach my destination in a week. I
+shan't be seeing you again, so I'll say good-bye."
+
+"How do you suppose you're going to get out of the country?" asked Bones
+curiously.
+
+Mr. Corklan laughed. "So long!" he said.
+
+"One moment, my dashin' old explorer," said Bones. "A little
+formality--I want to see your trunks opened."
+
+A look of suspicion dawned on the man's face. "What for?"
+
+"A little formality, my jolly old hero," said Bones.
+
+"Why didn't you say so before?" growled the man, and had his two trunks
+landed. "I suppose you know you're exceeding your duty?"
+
+"I didn't know--thanks for tellin' me," said Bones. "The fact is, sir
+an' fellow-man, I'm the Custom House officer."
+
+The man opened his bags, and Bones explored. He found three bottles of
+whisky, and these he extracted.
+
+"What's the idea?" asked Mr. Corklan.
+
+Bones answered him by breaking the bottles on a near-by stone.
+
+"Here, what the dickens----"
+
+"Wine is a mocker," said Bones, "strong drink is ragin'. This is what is
+termed in the land of Hope an' Glory a prohibition State, an' I'm
+entitled to fine you five hundred of the brightest an' best for
+attemptin' to smuggle intoxicants into our innocent country."
+
+Bones expected an outburst; instead, his speech evoked no more than a
+snigger.
+
+"You're funny," said the man.
+
+"My friends tell me so," admitted Bones. "But there's nothin' funny
+about drink. Acquainted as you are with the peculiar workin's of the
+native psychology, dear sir, you will understand the primitive cravin'
+of the untutored mind for the enemy that we put in our mouths to steal
+away our silly old brains. I wish you 'bon voyage.'"
+
+"So long," said Mr. Corklan.
+
+Bones went back to the Residency and made his report, and there, for the
+time being, the matter ended. It was not unusual for wandering
+scientists, manufacturers, and representatives of shipping companies to
+arrive armed with letters of introduction or command, and to be
+dispatched into the interior. The visits, happily, were few and far
+between. On this occasion Sanders, being uneasy, sent one of his spies
+to follow the adventurer, with orders to report any extraordinary
+happening--a necessary step to take, for the N'gombi, and especially the
+Inner N'gombi, are a secretive people, and news from local sources is
+hard to come by.
+
+"I shall never be surprised to learn that a war has been going on in the
+N'gombi for two months without our hearing a word about it."
+
+"If they fight amongst themselves--yes," said Captain Hamilton; "if they
+fight outsiders, there will be plenty of bleats. Why not send Bones to
+overlook his sugar experiments," he added.
+
+"Let's talk about something pleasant," said Bones hastily.
+
+It was exactly three months later when he actually made the trip.
+
+"Take the _Zaire_ up to the bend of the Isisi," said Sanders one
+morning, at breakfast, "and find out what Ali Kano is doing--the lazy
+beggar should have reported."
+
+"Any news from the N'gombi?" asked Hamilton.
+
+"Only roundabout stories of their industry. Apparently the sugar
+merchant is making big experiments. He has set half the people digging
+roots for him. Be ready to sail at dawn."
+
+"Will it be a dangerous trip?" asked the girl.
+
+"No. Why?" smiled Sanders.
+
+"Because I'd like to go. Oh, please, don't look so glum! Bones is
+awfully good to me."
+
+"Better than a jolly old brother," murmured Bones.
+
+"H'm!" Sanders shook his head, and she appealed to her brother.
+
+"Please!"
+
+"I wouldn't mind your going," said Hamilton, "if only to look after
+Bones."
+
+"S-sh!" said Bones reproachfully.
+
+"If you're keen on it, I don't see why you shouldn't--if you had a
+chaperon."
+
+"A chaperon!" sneered Bones. "Great Heavens! Do, old skipper, pull
+yourself together. Open the jolly old window and give him air. Feelin'
+better, sir?"
+
+"A chaperon! How absurd!" cried the girl indignantly. "I'm old enough to
+be Bones's mother! I'm nearly twenty--well, I'm older than Bones, and
+I'm ever so much more capable of looking after myself."
+
+The end of it was that she went, with her Kano maid and with the wife of
+Abiboo to cook for her. And in two days they came to the bend of the
+river, and Bones pursued his inquiries for the missing spy, but without
+success.
+
+"But this I tell you, lord," said the little chief who acted as
+Sanders's agent, "that there are strange things happening in the N'gombi
+country, for all the people have gone mad, and are digging up their
+teeth (tusks) and bringing them to a white man."
+
+"This shall go to Sandi," said Bones, realizing the importance of the
+news; and that same evening he turned the bow of the _Zaire_ down
+stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus said Wafa, the half-breed, for he was neither foreign Arab nor
+native N'gombi, yet combined the cunning of both--
+
+"Soon we shall see the puc-a-puc of Government turn from the
+crookedness of the river, and I will go out and speak to our lord
+Tibbetti, who is a very simple man, and like a child."
+
+"O Wafa," said one of the group of armed men which stood shivering on
+the beach in the cold hours of dawn, "may this be a good palaver! As for
+me, my stomach is filled with fearfulness. Let us all drink this magic
+water, for it gives us men courage."
+
+"That you shall do when you have carried out all our master's works,"
+said Wafa, and added with confidence: "Have no fear, for soon you shall
+see great wonders."
+
+They heard the deep boom of the _Zaire's_ siren signalling a solitary
+and venturesome fisherman to quit the narrow fair-way, and presently she
+came round the bend of the river, a dazzling white craft, showering
+sparks from her two slender smoke-stacks and leaving behind her twin
+cornucopias of grey smoke.
+
+Wafa stepped into a canoe, and, seeing that the others were preparing to
+follow him, he struck out swiftly, man[oe]uvring his ironwood boat to
+the very waters from whence a scared fisherman was frantically paddling.
+
+"Go not there, foreigner," wailed the Isisi Stabber-of-Waters, "for it
+is our lord Sandi, and his puc-a-puc has bellowed terribly."
+
+"Die you!" roared Wafa. "On the river bottom your body, son of a fish
+and father of snakes!"
+
+"O foreign frog!" came the shrill retort. "O poor man with two men's
+wives! O goatless----"
+
+Wafa was too intent upon his business to heed the rest. He struck the
+water strongly with his broad paddles, and reached the centre of the
+channel.
+
+Bones of the Houssas put up his hand and jerked the rope of the siren.
+
+_Whoo-o-o--woo-o-op!_
+
+"Bless his silly old head," said Bones fretfully, "the dashed fellow
+will be run down!"
+
+The girl was dusting Bones's cabin, and looked round. "What is it?" she
+asked.
+
+Bones made no reply. He gripped the telegraph handle and rung the
+engines astern as Yoka, the steersman, spun the wheel.
+
+Bump! Bump! Bumpity bump!
+
+The steamer slowed and stopped, and the girl came out to the bridge in
+alarm. The _Zaire_ had struck a sandbank, and was stranded high, if not
+dry.
+
+"Bring that man on board," said the wrathful Bones. And they hauled to
+his presence Wafa, who was neither Arab nor N'gombi, but combined the
+vices of both.
+
+"O man," said Bones, glaring at the offender through his eyeglass, "what
+evil ju-ju sent you to stop my fine ship?" He spoke in the Isisi
+dialect, and was surprised to be answered in coast Arabic.
+
+"Lord," said the man, unmoved by the wrath of his overlord, "I come to
+make a great palaver concerning spirits and devils. Lord, I have found a
+great magic."
+
+Bones grinned, for he had that sense of humour which rises superior to
+all other emotions. "Then you shall try your magic, my man, and lift
+this ship to deep water."
+
+Wafa was not at all embarrassed. "Lord, this is a greater magic, for it
+concerns men, and brings to life the dead. For, lord, in this forest is
+a wonderful tree. Behold!"
+
+He took from his loose-rolled waistband a piece of wood. Bones took it
+in his hand. It was the size of a corn cob, and had been newly cut, so
+that the wood was moist with sap. Bones smelt it. There was a faint
+odour of resin and camphor. Patricia Hamilton smiled. It was so like
+Bones to be led astray by side issues.
+
+"Where is the wonder, man, that you should drive my ship upon a
+sandbank! And who are these?" Bones pointed to six canoes, filled with
+men, approaching the _Zaire_. The man did not answer, but, taking the
+wood from Bones's hand, pulled a knife from his belt and whittled a
+shaving.
+
+"Here, lord," he said, "is my fine magic. With this wood I can do many
+miracles, such as making sick men strong and the strong weak."
+
+Bones heard the canoes bump against the side of the boat, but his mind
+was occupied with curiosity.
+
+"Thus do I make my magic, Tibbetti," droned Wafa.
+
+He held the knife by the haft in the right hand, and the chip of wood in
+his left. The point of the knife was towards the white man's heart.
+
+"Bones!" screamed the girl.
+
+Bones jumped aside and struck out as the man lunged. His nobbly fist
+caught Wafa under the jaw, and the man stumbled and fell. At the same
+instant there was a yell from the lower deck, the sound of scuffling,
+and a shot.
+
+Bones jumped for the girl, thrust her into the cabin, sliding the steel
+door behind him. His two revolvers hung at the head of his bunk, and he
+slipped them out, gave a glance to see whether they were loaded, and
+pushed the door.
+
+"Shut the door after me," he breathed.
+
+The bridge deck was deserted, and Bones raced down the ladder to the
+iron deck. Two Houssas and half a dozen natives lay dead or dying. The
+remainder of the soldiers were fighting desperately with whatever
+weapons they found to their hands--for, with characteristic carefulness,
+they had laid their rifles away in oil, lest the river air rust
+them--and, save for the sentry, who used a rifle common to all, they
+were unarmed.
+
+"O dogs!" roared Bones.
+
+The invaders turned and faced the long-barrelled Webleys, and the fight
+was finished. Later, Wafa came to the bridge with bright steel manacles
+on his wrist. His companions in the mad adventure sat on the iron deck
+below, roped leg to leg, and listened with philosophic calm as the
+Houssa sentry drew lurid pictures of the fate which awaited them.
+
+Bones sat in his deep chair, and the prisoner squatted before him. "You
+shall tell my lord Sandi why you did this wickedness," he said, "also,
+Wafa, what evil thought was in your mind."
+
+"Lord," said Wafa cheerfully, "what good comes to me if I speak?"
+Something about the man's demeanour struck Bones as strange, and he rose
+and went close to him.
+
+"I see," he said, with a tightened lip. "The palaver is finished."
+
+They led the man away, and the girl, who had been a spectator, asked
+anxiously: "What is wrong, Bones?"
+
+But the young man shook his head. "The breaking of all that Sanders has
+worked for," he said bitterly, and the very absence of levity in one
+whose heart was so young and gay struck a colder chill to the girl's
+heart than the yells of the warring N'gombi. For Sanders had a big place
+in Patricia Hamilton's life. In an hour the _Zaire_ was refloated, and
+was going at full speed down stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sanders held his court in the thatched palaver house between the Houssa
+guard-room and the little stockade prison at the river's edge--a prison
+hidden amidst the flowering shrubs and acacia trees.
+
+Wafa was the first to be examined. "Lord," he said, without
+embarrassment, "I tell you this--that I will not speak of the great
+wonders which lay in my heart unless you give me a book[6] that I shall
+go free."
+
+[Footnote 6: A written promise.]
+
+Sanders smiled unpleasantly. "By the Prophet, I say what is true," he
+began confidentially; and Wafa winced at the oath, for he knew that
+truth was coming, and truth of a disturbing character. "In this land I
+govern millions of men," said Sanders, speaking deliberately, "I and two
+white lords. I govern by fear, Wafa, because there is no love in simple
+native men, save a love for their own and their bellies."
+
+"Lord, you speak truth," said Wafa, the superior Arab of him responding
+to the confidence.
+
+"Now, if you make to kill the lord Tibbetti," Sanders went on, "and do
+your wickedness for secret reasons, must I not discover what is that
+secret, lest it mean that I lose my hold upon the lands I govern?"
+
+"Lord, that is also true," said Wafa.
+
+"For what is one life more or less," asked Sanders, "a suffering smaller
+or greater by the side of my millions and their good?"
+
+"Lord, you are Suliman," said Wafa eagerly. "Therefore, if you let me
+go, who shall be the worse for it?"
+
+Again Sanders smiled, that grim parting of lip to show his white teeth.
+"Yet you may lie, and, if I let you go, I have neither the truth nor
+your body. No, Wafa, you shall speak." He rose up from his chair.
+"To-day you shall go to the Village of Irons," he said; "to-morrow I
+will come to you, and you shall answer my questions. And, if you will
+not speak, I shall light a little fire on your chest, and that fire
+shall not go out except when the breath goes from your body. This
+palaver is finished."
+
+So they took Wafa away to the Village of Irons, where the evil men of
+the Territories worked with chains about their ankles for their many
+sins, and in the morning came Sanders.
+
+"Speak, man," he said.
+
+Wafa stared with an effort of defiance, but his face was twitching, for
+he saw the soldiers driving pegs into the ground, preparatory to staking
+him out. "I will speak the truth," he said.
+
+So they took him into a hut, and there Sanders sat with him alone for
+half an hour; and when the Commissioner came out, his face was drawn and
+grey. He beckoned to Hamilton, who came forward and saluted. "We will
+get back to headquarters," he said shortly, and they arrived two hours
+later.
+
+Sanders sat in the little telegraph office, and the Morse sounder
+rattled and clacked for half an hour. Other sounders were at work
+elsewhere, delicate needles vacillated in cable offices, and an
+Under-Secretary was brought from the House of Commons to the bureau of
+the Prime Minister to answer a question.
+
+At four o'clock in the afternoon came the message Sanders expected:
+"London says permit for Corklan forged. Arrest. Take extremest steps.
+Deal drastically, ruthlessly. Holding in residence three companies
+African Rifles and mountain battery support you. Good luck.
+Administration."
+
+Sanders came out of the office, and Bones met him.
+
+"Men all aboard, sir," he reported.
+
+"We'll go," said Sanders.
+
+He met the girl half-way to the quay. "I know it is something very
+serious," she said quietly; "you have all my thoughts." She put both her
+hands in his, and he took them. Then, without a word, he left her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. P. T. Corklan sat before his new hut in the village of Fimini. In
+that hut--the greatest the N'gombi had ever seen--were stored hundreds
+of packages all well wrapped and sewn in native cloth.
+
+He was not smoking a cigar, because his stock of cigars was running
+short, but he was chewing a toothpick, for these, at a pinch, could be
+improvised. He called to his headman. "Wafa?" he asked.
+
+"Lord, he will come, for he is very cunning," said the headman.
+
+Mr. Corklan grunted. He walked to the edge of the village, where the
+ground sloped down to a strip of vivid green rushes. "Tell me, how long
+will this river be full?" he asked.
+
+"Lord, for a moon."
+
+Corklan nodded. Whilst the secret river ran, there was escape for him,
+for its meandering course would bring him and his rich cargo to Spanish
+territory and deep water.
+
+His headman waited as though he had something to say. "Lord," he said at
+last, "the chief of the N'coro village sends this night ten great teeth
+and a pot."
+
+Corklan nodded. "If we're here, we'll get 'em. I hope we shall be gone."
+
+And then the tragically unexpected happened. A man in white came through
+the trees towards him, and behind was another white man and a platoon of
+native soldiers.
+
+"Trouble," said Corklan to himself, and thought the moment was one which
+called for a cigar.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Sanders!" he said cheerfully.
+
+Sanders eyed him in silence.
+
+"This is an unexpected pleasure," said Corklan.
+
+"Corklan, where is your still?" asked Sanders.
+
+The plump man laughed. "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said,
+"and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit--all proof,
+sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's
+method--in fact, as good as you could get it in England."
+
+Sanders nodded. "I remember now--you're the man that ran the still in
+the Ashanti country, and got away with the concession."
+
+"That's me," said the other complacently. "P. T. Corklan--I never assume
+an alias."
+
+Sanders nodded again. "I came past villages," he said, "where every man
+and almost every woman was drunk. I have seen villages wiped out in
+drunken fights. I have seen a year's hard work ahead of me. You have
+corrupted a province in a very short space of time, and, as far as I can
+judge, you hoped to steal a Government ship and get into neutral
+territory with the prize you have won by your----"
+
+"Enterprise," said Mr. Corklan obligingly. "You'll have to prove
+that--about the ship. I am willing to stand any trial you like. There's
+no law about prohibition--it's one you've made yourself. I brought up
+the still--that's true--brought it up in sections and fitted it. I've
+been distilling spirits--that's true----"
+
+"I also saw a faithful servant of Government, one Ali Kano," said
+Sanders, in a low voice. "He was lying on the bank of this secret river
+of yours with two revolver bullets in him."
+
+"The nigger was spying on me, and I shot him," explained Corklan.
+
+"I understand," said Sanders. And then, after a little pause: "Will you
+be hung or shot?"
+
+The cigar dropped from the man's mouth. "Hey?" he said hoarsely.
+"You--you can't--do that--for making a drop of liquor--for niggers!"
+
+"For murdering a servant of the State," corrected Sanders. "But, if it
+is any consolation to you, I will tell you that I would have killed you,
+anyway."
+
+It took Mr. Corklan an hour to make up his mind, and then he chose
+rifles.
+
+To-day the N'gombi point to a mound near the village of Fimini, which
+they call by a name which means, "The Waters of Madness," and it is
+believed to be haunted by devils.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+EYE TO EYE
+
+
+"Bones," said Captain Hamilton, in despair, "you will never be a
+Napoleon."
+
+"Dear old sir and brother-officer," said Lieutenant Tibbetts, "you are a
+jolly old pessimist."
+
+Bones was by way of being examined in subjects C and D, for promotion to
+captaincy, and Hamilton was the examining officer. By all the rules and
+laws and strict regulations which govern military examinations, Bones
+had not only failed, but he had seriously jeopardized his right to his
+lieutenancy, if every man had his due.
+
+"Now, let me put this," said Hamilton. "Suppose you were in charge of a
+company of men, and you were attacked on three sides, and you had a
+river behind you on the fourth side, and you found things were going
+very hard against you. What would you do?"
+
+"Dear old sir," said Bones thoughtfully, and screwing his face into all
+manner of contortions in his effort to secure the right answer, "I
+should go and wet my heated brow in the purling brook, then I'd take
+counsel with myself."
+
+"You'd lose," said Hamilton, with a groan. "That's the last person in
+the world you should go to for advice, Bones. Suppose," he said, in a
+last desperate effort to awaken a gleam of military intelligence in his
+subordinate's mind, "suppose you were trekking through the forest with a
+hundred rifles, and you found your way barred by a thousand armed men.
+What would you do?"
+
+"Go back," said Bones, "and jolly quick, dear old fellow."
+
+"Go back? What would you go back for?" asked the other, in astonishment.
+
+"To make my will," said Bones firmly, "and to write a few letters to
+dear old friends in the far homeland. I have friends, Ham," he said,
+with dignity, "jolly old people who listen for my footsteps, and to whom
+my voice is music, dear old fellow."
+
+"What other illusions do they suffer from?" asked Hamilton offensively,
+closing his book with a bang. "Well, you will be sorry to learn that I
+shall not recommend you for promotion."
+
+"You don't mean that," said Bones hoarsely.
+
+"I mean that," said Hamilton.
+
+"Well, I thought if I had a pal to examine me, I would go through with
+flying colours."
+
+"Then I am not a pal. You don't suggest," said Hamilton, with ominous
+dignity, "that I would defraud the public by lying as to the qualities
+of a deficient character?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Bones, nodding vigorously, "for my sake and for the
+sake of the child." The child was that small native whom Bones had
+rescued and adopted.
+
+"Not even for the sake of the child," said Hamilton, with an air of
+finality. "Bones, you're ploughed."
+
+Bones did not speak, and Hamilton gathered together the papers, forms,
+and paraphernalia of examination.
+
+He lifted his head suddenly, to discover that Bones was staring at him.
+It was no ordinary stare, but something that was a little uncanny. "What
+the dickens are you looking at?"
+
+Bones did not speak. His round eyes were fixed on his superior in an
+unwinking glare.
+
+"When I said you had failed," said Hamilton kindly, "I meant, of
+course----"
+
+"That I'd passed," muttered Bones excitedly. "Say it, Ham--say it!
+'Bones, congratulations, dear old lad'----"
+
+"I meant," said Hamilton coldly, "that you have another chance next
+month."
+
+The face of Lieutenant Tibbetts twisted into a painful contortion. "It
+didn't work!" he said bitterly, and stalked from the room.
+
+"Rum beggar!" thought Hamilton, and smiled to himself.
+
+"Have you noticed anything strange about Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton
+the next day.
+
+Her brother looked at her over his newspaper. "The strangest thing about
+Bones is Bones," he said, "and that I am compelled to notice every day
+of my life."
+
+She looked up at Sanders, who was idly pacing the stoep of the
+Residency. "Have you, Mr. Sanders?"
+
+Sanders paused. "Beyond the fact that he is rather preoccupied and
+stares at one----"
+
+"That is it," said the girl. "I knew I was right--he stares horribly. He
+has been doing it for a week--just staring. Do you think he is ill?"
+
+"He has been moping in his hut for the past week," said Hamilton
+thoughtfully, "but I was hoping that it meant that he was swotting for
+his exam. But staring--I seem to remember----"
+
+The subject of the discussion made his appearance at the far end of the
+square at that moment, and they watched him. First he walked slowly
+towards the Houssa sentry, who shouldered his arms in salute. Bones
+halted before the soldier and stared at him. Somehow, the watchers on
+the stoep knew that he was staring--there was something so fixed, so
+tense in his attitude. Then, without warning, the sentry's hand passed
+across his body, and the rifle came down to the "present."
+
+"What on earth is he doing?" demanded the outraged Hamilton, for
+sentries do not present arms to subaltern officers.
+
+Bones passed on. He stopped before one of the huts in the married lines,
+and stared at the wife of Sergeant Abiboo. He stared long and earnestly,
+and the woman, giggling uncomfortably, stared back. Then she began to
+dance.
+
+"For Heaven's sake----" gasped Sanders, as Bones passed on.
+
+"Bones!" roared Hamilton.
+
+Bones turned first his head, then his body towards the Residency, and
+made his slow way towards the group.
+
+"What is happening?" asked Hamilton.
+
+The face of Bones was flushed; there was triumph in his eye--triumph
+which his pose of nonchalance could not wholly conceal. "What is
+happening, dear old officer?" he asked innocently, and stared.
+
+"What the dickens are you goggling at?" demanded Hamilton irritably.
+"And please explain why you told the sentry to present arms to you."
+
+"I didn't tell him, dear old sir and superior captain," said Bones. His
+eyes never left Hamilton's; he stared with a fierceness and with an
+intensity that was little short of ferocious.
+
+"Confound you, what are you staring at? Aren't you well?" demanded
+Hamilton wrathfully.
+
+Bones blinked. "Quite well, sir and comrade," he said gravely. "Pardon
+the question--did you feel a curious and unaccountable inclination to
+raise your right hand and salute me?"
+
+"Did I--what?" demanded his dumbfounded superior.
+
+"A sort of itching of the right arm--an almost overpowerin' inclination
+to touch your hat to poor old Bones?"
+
+Hamilton drew a long breath. "I felt an almost overpowering desire to
+lift my foot," he said significantly.
+
+"Look at me again," said Bones calmly. "Fix your eyes on mine an' think
+of nothin'. Now shut your eyes. Now you can't open 'em."
+
+"Of course I can open them," said Hamilton. "Have you been drinking,
+Bones?"
+
+A burst of delighted laughter from the girl checked Bones's indignant
+denial. "I know!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Bones is trying to
+mesmerize you!"
+
+"What?"
+
+The scarlet face of Bones betrayed him.
+
+"Power of the human eye, dear old sir," he said hurriedly. "Some people
+have it--it's a gift. I discovered it the other day after readin' an
+article in _The Scientific Healer_."
+
+"Phew!" Hamilton whistled. "So," he said, with dangerous calm, "all this
+staring and gaping of yours means that, does it? I remember now. When I
+was examining you for promotion the other day, you stared. Trying to
+mesmerize me?"
+
+"Let bygones be bygones, dear old friend," begged Bones.
+
+"And when I asked you to produce the company pay-sheets, which you
+forgot to bring up to date, you stared at me!"
+
+"It's a gift," said Bones feebly.
+
+"Oh, Bones," said the girl slowly, "you stared at me, too, after I
+refused to go picnicking with you on the beach."
+
+"All's fair in love an' war," said Bones vaguely. "It's a wonderful
+gift."
+
+"Have you ever mesmerized anybody?" asked Hamilton curiously, and Bones
+brightened up.
+
+"Rather, dear old sir," he said. "Jolly old Ali, my secretary--goes off
+in a regular trance on the slightest provocation. Fact, dear old Ham."
+
+Hamilton clapped his hands, and his orderly, dozing in the shade of the
+verandah, rose up. "Go, bring Ali Abid," said Hamilton. And when the man
+had gone: "Are you under the illusion that you made the sentry present
+arms to you, and Abiboo's woman dance for you, by the magic of your
+eye?"
+
+"You saw," said the complacent Bones. "It's a wonderful gift, dear old
+Ham. As soon as I read the article, I tried it on Ali. Got him, first
+pop!"
+
+The girl was bubbling with suppressed laughter, and there was a twinkle
+in Sanders's eye. "I recall that you saw me in connection with shooting
+leave in the N'gombi."
+
+"Yes, sir and Excellency," said the miserable Bones.
+
+"And I said that I thought it inadvisable, because of the trouble in the
+bend of the Isisi River."
+
+"Yes, Excellency and sir," agreed Bones dolefully.
+
+"And then you stared."
+
+"Did I, dear old--Did I, sir?"
+
+His embarrassment was relieved by the arrival of Ali. So buoyant a soul
+had Bones, that from the deeps of despair into which he was beginning to
+sink he rose to heights of confidence, not to say self-assurance, that
+were positively staggering.
+
+"Miss Patricia, ladies and gentlemen," said Bones briskly, "we have here
+Ali Abid, confidential servant and faithful retainer. I will now
+endeavour to demonstrate the power of the human eye."
+
+He met the stolid gaze of Ali and stared. He stared terribly and
+alarmingly, and Ali, to do him justice, stared back.
+
+"Close your eyes," commanded Bones. "You can't open them, can you?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "optics of subject are hermetically sealed."
+
+"I will now put him in a trance," said Bones, and waved his hand
+mysteriously. Ali rocked backward and forward, and would have fallen but
+for the supporting arm of the demonstrator. "He is now insensible to
+pain," said Bones proudly.
+
+"Lend me your hatpin, Pat," said Hamilton.
+
+"I will now awaken him," said Bones hastily, and snapped his fingers.
+Ali rose to his feet with great dignity. "Thank you, Ali; you may go,"
+said his master, and turned, ready to receive the congratulations of
+the party.
+
+"Do you seriously believe that you mesmerized that humbug?"
+
+Bones drew himself erect. "Sir and captain," he said stiffly, "do you
+suggest I am a jolly old impostor? You saw the sentry, sir, you saw the
+woman, sir."
+
+"And I saw Ali," said Hamilton, nodding, "and I'll bet he gave the
+sentry something and the woman something to play the goat for you."
+
+Bones bowed slightly and distantly. "I cannot discuss my powers, dear
+old sir; you realize that there are some subjects too delicate to broach
+except with kindred spirits. I shall continue my studies of psychic
+mysteries undeterred by the cold breath of scepticism." He saluted
+everybody, and departed with chin up and shoulders squared, a picture of
+offended dignity.
+
+That night Sanders lay in bed, snuggled up on his right side, which
+meant that he had arrived at the third stage of comfort which precedes
+that fading away of material life which men call sleep. Half consciously
+he listened to the drip, drip, drip of rain on the stoep, and promised
+himself that he would call upon Abiboo in the morning, to explain the
+matter of a choked gutter, for Abiboo had sworn, by the Prophet and
+certain minor relatives of the Great One, that he had cleared every
+bird's nest from the ducts about the Residency.
+
+Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip!
+
+Sanders sank with luxurious leisure into the nothingness of the night.
+
+Drip-tap, drip-tap, drip-tap!
+
+He opened his eyes slowly, slid one leg out of bed, and groped for his
+slippers. He slipped into the silken dressing-gown which had been flung
+over the end of the bed, corded it about him, and switched on the
+electric light. Then he passed out into the big common room, with its
+chairs drawn together in overnight comradeship, and the solemn tick of
+the big clock to emphasize the desolation. He paused a second to switch
+on the lights, then went to the door and flung it open.
+
+"Enter!" he said in Arabic.
+
+The man who came in was naked, save for a tarboosh on his head and a
+loin-cloth about his middle. His slim body shone with moisture, and
+where he stood on the white matting were two little pools. Kano from his
+brown feet to the soaked fez, he stood erect with that curious
+assumption of pride and equality which the Mussulman bears with less
+offence to his superiors than any other race.
+
+"Peace on this house," he said, raising his hand.
+
+"Speak, Ahmet," said Sanders, dropping into a big chair and stretching
+back, with his clasped hands behind his head. He eyed the man gravely
+and without resentment, for no spy would tap upon his window at night
+save that the business was a bad one.
+
+"Lord," said the man, "it is shameful that I should wake your lordship
+from your beautiful dream, but I came with the river."[7] He looked down
+at his master, and in the way of certain Kano people, who are
+dialecticians to a man, he asked: "Lord, it is written in the Sura of
+Ya-Sin, 'To the sun it is not given to overtake the moon----'"
+
+[Footnote 7: I came when I could.]
+
+"'Nor doth the night outstrip the day; but each in his own sphere doth
+journey on,'" finished Sanders patiently. "Thus also begins the Sura of
+the Cave: 'Praise be to God, Who hath sent down the book to his servant,
+and hath put no crookedness into it.' Therefore, Ahmet, be plain to me,
+and leave your good speeches till you meet the abominable Sufi."
+
+The man sank to his haunches. "Lord," he said, "from the bend of the
+river, where the Isisi divides the land of the N'gombi from the lands of
+the Good Chief, I came, travelling by day and night with the river, for
+many strange things have happened which are too wonderful for me. This
+Chief Busesi, whom all men call good, has a daughter by his second wife.
+In the year of the High Crops she was given to a stranger from the
+forest, him they call Gufuri-Bululu, and he took her away to live in his
+hut."
+
+Sanders sat up. "Go on, man," he said.
+
+"Lord, she has returned and performs wonderful magic," said the man,
+"for by the wonder of her eyes she can make dead men live and live men
+die, and all people are afraid. Also, lord, there was a wise man in the
+forest, who was blind, and he had a daughter who was the prop and staff
+of him, and because of his wisdom, and because she hated all who
+rivalled her, the woman D'rona Gufuri told certain men to seize the girl
+and hold her in a deep pool of water until she was dead."
+
+"This is a bad palaver," said Sanders; "but you shall tell me what you
+mean by the wonder of her eyes."
+
+"Lord," said the man, "she looks upon men, and they do her will. Now, it
+is her will that there shall be a great dance on the Rind of the Moon,
+and after she shall send the spears of the people of Busesi--who is old
+and silly, and for this reason is called good--against the N'gombi
+folk."
+
+"Oh," said Sanders, biting his lip in thought, "by the wonder of her
+eyes!"
+
+"Lord," said the man, "even I have seen this, for she has stricken men
+to the ground by looking at them, and some she has made mad, and others
+foolish."
+
+Sanders turned his head at a noise from the doorway. The tall figure of
+Hamilton stood peering sleepily at the light.
+
+"I heard your voice," he said apologetically. "What is the trouble?"
+
+Briefly Sanders related the story the man had told.
+
+"Wow!" said Hamilton, in a paroxysm of delight.
+
+"What's wrong?"
+
+"Bones!" shouted Hamilton. "Bones is the fellow. Let him go up and
+subdue her with his eye. He's the very fellow. I'll go over and call
+him, sir."
+
+He hustled into his clothing, slipped on a mackintosh, and, making his
+way across the dark square, admitted himself to the sleeping-hut of
+Lieutenant Tibbetts. By the light of his electric torch he discovered
+the slumberer. Bones lay on his back, his large mouth wide open, one
+thin leg thrust out from the covers, and he was making strange noises.
+Hamilton found the lamp and lit it, then he proceeded to the
+heart-breaking task of waking his subordinate. "Up, you lazy devil!" he
+shouted, shaking Bones by the shoulder.
+
+Bones opened his eyes and blinked rapidly. "On the word 'One!'" he said
+hoarsely, "carry the left foot ten inches to the left front, at the same
+time bringing the rifle to a horizontal position at the right side.
+One!"
+
+"Wake up, wake up, Bones!"
+
+Bones made a wailing noise. It was the noise of a mother panther who has
+returned to her lair to discover that her offspring have been eaten by
+wild pigs. "Whar-r-ow-ow!" he said, and turned over on his right side.
+
+Hamilton pocketed his torch, and, lifting Bones bodily from the bed, let
+him fall with a thud.
+
+Bones scrambled up, staring. "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "I stand
+before you a ruined man. Drink has been my downfall, as the dear old
+judge remarked. I _did_ kill Wilfred Morgan, and I plead the unwritten
+law." He saluted stiffly, collapsed on to his pillow, and fell instantly
+into a deep child-like sleep.
+
+Hamilton groaned. He had had occasion to wake Bones from his beauty
+sleep before, but he had never been as bad as this. He took a soda
+siphon from the little sideboard and depressed the lever, holding the
+outlet above his victim's head.
+
+Bones leapt up with a roar. "Hello, Ham!" he said quite sanely. "Well
+dear old officer, this is the finish! You stand by the lifeboat an'
+shoot down anybody who attempts to leave the ship before the torpedoes
+are saved. I'm goin' down into the hold to have a look at the women an'
+children." He saluted, and was stepping out into the wet night, when
+Hamilton caught his arm.
+
+"Steady, the Buffs, my sleeping beauty! Dress yourself. Sanders wants
+you."
+
+Bones nodded. "I'll just drive over and see him," he said, climbed back
+into bed, and was asleep in a second.
+
+Hamilton put out the light and went back to the Residency. "I hadn't
+the heart to cut his ear off," he said regretfully. "I'm afraid we
+shan't be able to consult Bones till the morning."
+
+Sanders nodded. "Anyway, I will wait for the morning. I have told Abiboo
+to get stores and wood aboard, and to have steam in the _Zaire_. Let us
+emulate Bones."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Hamilton piously.
+
+Bones came blithely to breakfast, a dapper and a perfectly groomed
+figure. He received the news of the ominous happenings in the N'gombi
+country with that air of profound solemnity which so annoyed Hamilton.
+
+"I wish you had called me in the night," he said gravely. "Dear old
+officer, I think it was due to me."
+
+"Called you! Called you! Why--why----" spluttered Hamilton.
+
+"In fact, we did call you Bones, but we could not wake you," smoothed
+Sanders.
+
+A look of amazement spread over the youthful face of Lieutenant
+Tibbetts. "You called me?" he asked incredulously. "Called _me_?"
+
+"_You!_" hissed Hamilton. "I not only called you, but I kicked you.
+I poured water on you, and I chucked you up to the roof of the hut and
+dropped you."
+
+A faint but unbelieving smile from Bones. "Are you sure it was me,
+dear old officer?" he asked, and Hamilton choked. "I only ask," said
+Bones, turning blandly to the girl, "because I'm a notoriously light
+sleeper, dear old Miss Patricia. The slightest stir wakes me, and
+instantly I'm in possession of all my faculties. Bosambo calls me
+'Eye-That-Never-Shuts----'"
+
+"Bosambo is a notorious leg-puller," interrupted Hamilton irritably.
+"Really, Bones----"
+
+"Often, dear old Sister," Bones went on impressively, "campin' out in
+the forest, an' sunk in the profound sleep which youth an' a good
+conscience brings, something has wakened me, an' I've jumped to my feet,
+a revolver in my hand, an' what do you think it was?"
+
+"A herd of wild elephants walking on your chest?" suggested Hamilton.
+
+"What do you think it was, dear old Patricia miss?" persisted Bones, and
+interrupted her ingenious speculation in his usual aggravating manner:
+"The sound of a footstep breakin' a twig a hundred yards away!"
+
+"Wonderful!" sneered Hamilton, stirring his coffee. "Bones, if you could
+only spell, what a novelist you'd be!"
+
+"The point is," said Sanders, with good-humoured patience, which
+brought, for some curious reason, a warm sense of intimacy to the girl,
+"you've got to go up and try your eye on the woman D'rona Gufuri."
+
+Bones leant back in his chair and spoke with deliberation and
+importance, for he realized that he, and only he, could supply a
+solution to the difficulties of his superiors.
+
+"The power of the human eye, when applied by a jolly old scientist to a
+heathen, is irresistible. You may expect me down with the prisoner in
+four days."
+
+"She may be more trouble than you expect," said Sanders seriously. "The
+longer one lives in native lands, the less confident can one be. There
+have been remarkable cases of men possessing the power which this woman
+has----"
+
+"And which I have, sir an' Excellency, to an extraordinary extent,"
+interrupted Bones firmly. "Have no fear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thirty-six hours later Bones stood before the woman D'rona Gufuri.
+
+"Lord," said the woman, "men speak evilly of me to Sandi, and now you
+have come to take me to the Village of Irons."
+
+"That is true, D'rona," said Bones, and looked into her eyes.
+
+"Lord," said the woman, speaking slowly, "you shall go back to Sandi and
+say, 'I have not seen the woman D'rona'--for, lord, is this not truth?"
+
+"I'wa! I'wa!" muttered Bones thickly.
+
+"You cannot see me Tibbetti, and I am not here," said the woman, and she
+spoke before the assembled villagers, who stood, knuckles to teeth,
+gazing awe-stricken upon the scene.
+
+"I cannot see you," said Bones sleepily.
+
+"And now you cannot hear me, lord?"
+
+Bones did not reply.
+
+The woman took him by the arm and led him through the patch of wood
+which fringes the river and separates beach from village. None followed
+them; even the two Houssas who formed the escort of Lieutenant Tibbetts
+stayed rooted to the spot.
+
+Bones passed into the shadow of the trees, the woman's hand on his arm.
+Then suddenly from the undergrowth rose a lank figure, and D'rona of the
+Magic Eye felt a bony hand at her throat. She laughed.
+
+"O man, whoever you be, look upon me in this light, and your strength
+shall melt."
+
+She twisted round to meet her assailant's face, and shrieked aloud, for
+he was blind. And Bones stood by without moving, without seeing or
+hearing, whilst the strong hands of the blind witch-doctor, whose
+daughter she had slain, crushed the life from her body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Of course, sir," explained Bones, "you may think she mesmerized me. On
+the other hand, it is quite possible that she acted under my influence.
+It's a moot point, sir an' Excellency--jolly moot!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE HOODED KING
+
+
+There was a certain Portuguese governor--this was in the days when
+Colhemos was Colonial Minister--who had a small legitimate income and an
+extravagant wife. This good lady had a villa at Cintra, a box at the
+Real Theatre de São Carlos, and a motor-car, and gave five o'clocks at
+the Hotel Nunes to the aristocracy and gentry who inhabited that spot,
+of whom the ecstatic Spaniard said, "dejar a Cintra, y ver al mundo
+entero, es, con verdad caminar en capuchera."
+
+Since her husband's salary was exactly $66.50 weekly and the upkeep of
+the villa alone was twice that amount, it is not difficult to understand
+that Senhor Bonaventura was a remarkable man.
+
+Colhemos came over to the Foreign Office in the Praco de Commercio one
+day and saw Dr. Sarabesta, and Sarabesta, who was both a republican and
+a sinner, was also ambitious, or he had a Plan and an Ideal--two very
+dangerous possessions for a politician, since they lead inevitably to
+change, than which nothing is more fatal to political systems.
+
+"Colhemos," said the doctor dramatically, "you are ruining me! You are
+bringing me to the dust and covering me with the hatred and mistrust of
+the Powers!"
+
+He folded his arms and rose starkly from the chair, his beard all
+a-bristle, his deep little eyes glaring.
+
+"What is wrong, Baptisa?" asked Colhemos.
+
+The other flung out his arms in an extravagant gesture.
+
+"Ruin!" he cried somewhat inadequately.
+
+He opened the leather portfolio which lay on the table and extracted six
+sheets of foolscap paper.
+
+"Read!" he said, and subsided into his padded armchair a picture of
+gloom.
+
+The sheets of foolscap were surmounted by crests showing an emaciated
+lion and a small horse with a spiral horn in his forehead endeavouring
+to climb a chafing-dish which had been placed on edge for the purpose,
+and was suitably inscribed with another lion, two groups of leopards and
+a harp.
+
+Colhemos did not stop to admire the menagerie, but proceeded at once to
+the literature. It was in French, and had to do with a certain condition
+of affairs in Portuguese Central Africa which "constituted a grave and
+increasing menace to the native subjects" of "Grande Bretagne." There
+were hints, "which His Majesty's Government would be sorry to believe,
+of raids and requisitions upon the native manhood" of this country which
+differed little from slave raids.
+
+Further, "Mr. Commissioner Sanders of the Territories regretted to
+learn" that these labour requisitions resulted in a condition of affairs
+not far removed from slavery.
+
+Colhemos read through the dispatch from start to finish, and put it down
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Pinto has been overdoing it," he admitted. "I shall have to write to
+him."
+
+"What you write to Pinto may be interesting enough to print," said Dr.
+Sarabesta violently, "but what shall I write to London? This
+Commissioner Sanders is a fairly reliable man, and his Government will
+act upon what he says."
+
+Colhemos, who was really a great man (it was a distinct loss when he
+faced a firing platoon in the revolutionary days of '12), tapped his
+nose with a penholder.
+
+"You can say that we shall send a special commissioner to the M'fusi
+country to report, and that he will remain permanently established in
+the M'fusi to suppress lawless acts."
+
+The doctor looked up wonderingly.
+
+"Pinto won't like that," said he, "besides which, the M'fusi are quite
+unmanageable. The last time we tried to bring them to reason it
+cost--Santa Maria!... and the lives!... phew!"
+
+Colhemos nodded.
+
+"The duc de Sagosta," he said slowly, "is an enthusiastic young man. He
+is also a royalist and allied by family ties to Dr. Ceillo of the Left.
+He is, moreover, an Anglomaniac--though why he should be so when his
+mother was an American woman I do not know. He shall be our
+commissioner, my dear Baptisa."
+
+His dear Baptisa sat bolt upright, every hair in his bristling head
+erect.
+
+"A royalist!" he gasped, "do you want to set Portugal ablaze?"
+
+"There are moments when I could answer 'Yes' to that question," said the
+truthful Colhemos "but for the moment I am satisfied that there will be
+no fireworks. It will do no harm to send the boy. It will placate the
+Left and please the Clerics--it will also consolidate our reputation for
+liberality and largeness of mind. Also the young man will either be
+killed or fall a victim to the sinister influences of that corruption
+which, alas, has so entered into the vitals of our Colonial service."
+
+So Manuel duc de Sagosta was summoned, and prepared for the subject of
+his visit by telephone, came racing up from Cintra in his big American
+juggernaut, leapt up the stairs of the Colonial Office two at a time,
+and came to Colhemos' presence in a state of mind which may be described
+as a big mental whoop.
+
+"You will understand, Senhor," said Colhemos, "that I am doing that
+which may make me unpopular. For that I care nothing! My country is my
+first thought, and the glory and honour of our flag! Some day you may
+hold my portfolio in the Cabinet, and it will be well if you bring to
+your high and noble office the experience...."
+
+Then they all talked together, and the dark room flickered with
+gesticulating palms.
+
+Colhemos came to see the boy off by the M.N.P. boat which carried him to
+the African Coast.
+
+"I suppose, Senhor," said the duc, "there would be no objection on the
+part of the Government to my calling on my way at a certain British
+port. I have a friend in the English army--we were at Clifton
+together----"
+
+"My friend," said Colhemos, pressing the young man's hand warmly, "you
+must look upon England as a potential ally, and lose no opportunity
+which offers to impress upon our dear colleagues this fact, that behind
+England, unmoved, unshaken, faithful, stands the armed might of
+Portugal. May the saints have you in their keeping!"
+
+He embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bones was drilling recruits at headquarters when Hamilton hailed him
+from the edge of the square.
+
+"There's a pal of yours come to see you, Bones," he roared.
+
+Bones marched sedately to his superior and touched his helmet.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"A friend of yours--just landed from the Portuguese packet."
+
+Bones was mystified, and went up to the Residency to find a young man in
+spotless white being entertained by Patricia Hamilton and a very
+thoughtful Sanders.
+
+The duc de Sagosta leapt to his feet as Bones came up the verandah.
+
+"Hullo, Conk!" he yelled hilariously.
+
+Bones stared.
+
+"God bless my life," he stammered, "it's Mug!"
+
+There was a terrific hand-shaking accompanied by squawking inquiries
+which were never answered, uproarious laughter, back patting, brazen and
+baseless charges that each was growing fat, and Sanders watched it with
+great kindness.
+
+"Here's old Ham," said Bones, "you ought to know Ham--Captain Hamilton,
+sir, my friend, the duke of something or other--but you can call him
+Mug--Miss Hamilton--this is Mug."
+
+"We've already been introduced," she laughed. "But why do you let him
+call you Mug?"
+
+The duc grinned.
+
+"I like Mug," he said simply.
+
+He was to stay to lunch, for the ship was not leaving until the
+afternoon, and Bones carried him off to his hut.
+
+"A joyous pair," said Hamilton enviously. "Lord, if I was only a boy
+again!"
+
+Sanders shook his head.
+
+"You don't echo that wish?" said Pat.
+
+"I wasn't thinking about that--I was thinking of the boy. I dislike this
+M'fusi business, and I can't think why the Government sent him. They are
+a pretty bad lot--their territory is at the back of the Akasava, and the
+Chief of the M'fusi is a rascal."
+
+"But he says that he has been sent to reform them," said the girl.
+
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"It is not a job I should care to undertake--and yet----"
+
+He knitted his forehead.
+
+"And yet----?"
+
+"I could reform them--Bones could reform them. But if they were reformed
+it would break Bonaventura, for he holds his job subject to their
+infamy."
+
+At lunch Sanders was unusually silent, a silence which was unnoticed,
+save by the girl. Bones and his friend, however, needed no stimulation.
+Lunch was an almost deafening meal, and when the time came for the duc
+to leave, the whole party went down to the beach to see him embark.
+
+"Good-bye, old Mug!" roared Bones, as the boat pulled away. "Whoop! hi!
+how!"
+
+"You're a noisy devil," said Hamilton, admiringly.
+
+"Vox populi, vox Dei," said Bones.
+
+He had an unexpected visitor that evening, for whilst he was dressing
+for dinner, Sanders came into his hut--an unusual happening.
+
+What Sanders had to say may not be related since it was quite
+unofficial, but Bones came to dinner that night and behaved with such
+decorum and preserved a mien so grave, that Hamilton thought he was ill.
+
+The duc continued his journey down the African Coast and presently came
+to a port which was little more than a beach, a jetty, a big white
+house, and by far the most imposing end of the Moanda road. In due time,
+he arrived by the worst track in the world (he was six days on the
+journey) at Moanda itself, and came into the presence of the Governor.
+
+Did the duc but know it, his Excellency had also been prepared for the
+young man's mission. The mail had arrived by carrier the day before the
+duc put in his appearance, and Pinto Bonaventura had his little piece
+all ready to say.
+
+"I will give you all the assistance I possibly can," he said, as they
+sat at _déjeuner_, "but, naturally, I cannot guarantee you immunity."
+
+"Immunity?" said the puzzled duc.
+
+Senhor Bonaventura nodded gravely.
+
+"Nothing is more repugnant to me than slavery," he said, "unless it be
+the terrible habit of drinking. If I could sweep these evils out of
+existence with a wave of my hand, believe me I would do so; but I cannot
+perform miracles, and the Government will not give me sufficient troops
+to suppress these practices which every one of us hold in abhorrence."
+
+"But," protested the duc, a little alarmed, "since I am going to reform
+the M'fusi...."
+
+The Governor choked over his coffee and apologized. He did not laugh,
+because long residence in Central Africa had got him out of the habit,
+and had taught him a certain amount of self-control in all things except
+the consumption of marsala.
+
+"Pray go on," he said, wearing an impassive face.
+
+"It will be to the interests of Portugal, no less than to your
+Excellency's interest," said the young man, leaning across the table and
+speaking with great earnestness, "if I can secure a condition of peace,
+prosperity, sobriety, and if I can establish the Portuguese law in this
+disturbed area."
+
+"Undoubtedly," acknowledged the older man with profound seriousness.
+
+So far from the duc's statement representing anything near the truth, it
+may be said that a restoration of order would serve his Excellency very
+badly indeed. In point of fact he received something like eight
+shillings for every "head" of "recruited labour." He also received a
+commission from the same interested syndicates which exported
+able-bodied labourers, a commission amounting to six shillings upon
+every case of square-face, and a larger sum upon every keg of rum that
+came into the country.
+
+Sobriety and law would, in fact, spell much discomfort to the elegant
+lady who lived in the villa at Cintra, and would considerably diminish
+not only Senhor Bonaventura's handsome balance at the Bank of Brazil,
+but would impoverish certain ministers, permanent and temporary, who
+looked to their dear Pinto for periodical contributions to what was
+humorously described as "The Party Fund."
+
+Yet the duc de Sagosta went into the wilds with a high heart and a
+complete faith, in his youthful and credulous soul, that he had behind
+him the full moral and physical support of a high-minded and patriotic
+Governor. The high-minded and patriotic Governor, watching the caravan
+of his new assistant disappearing through the woods which fringe Moanda,
+expressed in picturesque language his fervent hope that the mud, the
+swamp, the forest and the wilderness of the M'fusi country would swallow
+up this young man for evermore, amen. The unpopularity of the new
+Commissioner was sealed when the Governor learnt of his visit to
+Sanders, for "Sanders" was a name at which his Excellency made
+disapproving noises.
+
+The predecessor of the duc de Sagosta was dead. His grave was in
+the duc's front garden, and was covered with rank grass. The new-comer
+found the office correspondence in order (as a glib native clerk
+demonstrated); he also found 103 empty bottles behind the house, and
+understood the meaning of that coarse grave in the garden. He found
+that the last index number in the letter-book was 951.
+
+It is remarkable that the man he succeeded should have found, in one
+year, 951 subjects for correspondence, but it is the fact. Possibly nine
+hundred of the letters had to do with the terrible state of the
+Residency at Uango-Bozeri. The roof leaked, the foundations had settled,
+and not a door closed as it should close. On the day of his arrival the
+duc found a _mamba_ resting luxuriously in his one armchair, a discovery
+which suggested the existence of a whole colony of these deadly
+brutes--the _mamba_ bite is fatal in exactly ninety seconds--under or
+near the house.
+
+The other fifty dispatches probably had to do with the late
+Commissioner's arrears of pay, for Portugal at that time was in the
+throes of her annual crisis, and ministries were passing through the
+Government offices at Lisbon with such rapidity that before a cheque
+could be carried from the Foreign Office to the bank, it was out of
+date.
+
+Uango Bozeri is 220 miles by road from the coast, and is the centre of
+the child-like people of the M'fusi. Here the duc dwelt and had his
+being, as Governor of 2,000 square miles, and overlord of some million
+people who were cannibals with a passion for a fiery liquid which was
+described by traders as "rum." It was as near rum as the White City is
+to Heaven; that is to say, to the uncultivated taste it might have been
+rum, and anyway was as near to rum as the taster could expect to get.
+
+This is all there is to be said about the duc de Sagosta, save that his
+headman swindled him, his soldiers were conscienceless natives
+committing acts of brigandage in his innocent name, whilst his chief at
+Moanda was a peculating and incompetent scoundrel.
+
+At the time when the duc was finding life a bitter and humiliating
+experience, and had reached the stage when he sat on his predecessor's
+grave for company, a small and unauthorized party crossed the frontier
+from the British Territories in search of adventure.
+
+Now it happened that the particular region through which the border-line
+passed was governed by the Chief of the Greater M'fusi, who was a
+cannibal, a drunkard, and a master of two regiments.
+
+The duc had been advised not to interfere with the chief of his people,
+and he had (after one abortive and painful experience) obeyed his
+superiors, accepting the hut tax which was sent to him (and which was
+obviously and insolently inadequate) without demur.
+
+No white man journeyed to the city of the M'fusi without invitation
+from the chief, and as Chief Karata never issued such invitation, the
+Greater M'fusi was a _terra incognita_ even to his Excellency the
+Governor-General of the Central and Western Provinces.
+
+Karata was a drunkard approaching lunacy. It was his whim for weeks on
+end to wear on his head the mask of a goat. At other times, "as a mark
+of his confidence in devils," he would appear hidden beneath a plaited
+straw extinguisher which fitted him from head to foot. He was eccentric
+in other ways which need not be particularized, but he was never so
+eccentric that he welcomed strangers.
+
+Unfortunately for those concerned, the high road from the Territories
+passed through the M'fusi drift. And one day there came a panting
+messenger from the keeper of the drift who flung himself down at the
+king's feet.
+
+"Lord," said he, "there is a white man at the drift, and with him a
+certain chief and his men."
+
+"You will take the men, bringing them to me tied with ropes," said the
+king, who looked at the messenger with glassy eyes and found some
+difficulty in speaking, for he was at the truculent stage of his second
+bottle.
+
+The messenger returned and met the party on the road. What was his
+attitude towards the intruders it is impossible to say. He may have been
+insolent, secure in the feeling that he was representing his master's
+attitude towards white men; he may have offered fight in the illusion
+that the six warriors he took with him were sufficient to enforce the
+king's law. It is certain that he never returned.
+
+Instead there came to the king's kraal a small but formidable party
+under a white man, and they arrived at a propitious moment, for the
+ground before the king's great hut was covered with square bottles, and
+the space in front of the palace was crowded with wretched men chained
+neck to neck and waiting to march to the coast and slavery.
+
+The white man pushed back his helmet.
+
+"Goodness gracious Heavens!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly horrid!
+Bosambo, this is immensely illegal an' terrificly disgustin'."
+
+The Chief of the Ochori looked round.
+
+"Dis feller be dam' bad," was his effort.
+
+Bones walked leisurely to the shady canopy under which the king sat, and
+King Karata stared stupidly at the unexpected vision.
+
+"O King," said Bones in the Akasavian vernacular which runs from Dacca
+to the Congo, "this is an evil thing that you do--against all law."
+
+Open-mouthed Karata continued to stare.
+
+To the crowded kraal, on prisoner and warrior, councillor and dancing
+woman alike, came a silence deep and unbroken.
+
+They heard the words spoken in a familiar tongue, and marvelled that a
+white man should speak it. Bones was carrying a stick and taking
+deliberate aim, and after two trial strokes he brought the nobbly end
+round with a "swish!"
+
+A bottle of square-face smashed into a thousand pieces, and there arose
+on the hot air the sickly scent of crude spirits. Fascinated, silent,
+motionless, King Karata, named not without reason "The Terrible,"
+watched the destruction as bottle followed bottle.
+
+Then as a dim realization of the infamy filtered through his thick
+brain, he rose with a growl like a savage animal, and Bones turned
+quickly. But Bosambo was quicker. One stride brought him to the king's
+side.
+
+"Down, dog!" he said. "O Karata, you are very near the painted hut where
+dead kings lie."
+
+The king sank back and glared to and fro.
+
+All that was animal in him told of his danger; he smelt death in the
+mirthless grin of the white man; he smelt it as strongly under the hand
+of the tall native wearing the monkey-tails of chieftainship. If they
+would only stand away from him they would die quickly enough. Let them
+get out of reach, and a shout, an order, would send them bloodily to the
+ground with little kicks and twitches as the life ran out of them.
+
+But they stood too close, and that order of his meant his death.
+
+"O white man," he began.
+
+"Listen, black man," said Bosambo, and lapsed into his English; "hark
+um, you dam' black nigger--what for you speak um so?"
+
+"You shall say 'master' to me, Karata," said Bones easily, "for in my
+land 'white man' is evil talk."[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: In most native countries "white man" is seldom employed
+save as a piece of insolence. It is equivalent to the practice of
+referring to the natives as niggers.]
+
+"Master," said the king sullenly, "this is a strange thing--for I see
+that you are English and we be servants of another king. Also it is
+forbidden that any white--that any master should stand in my kraal
+without my word, and I have driven even Igselensi from my face."
+
+"That is all foolish talk, Karata," said Bones. "This is good talk:
+shall Karata live or shall he die? This you shall say. If you send away
+this palaver and say to your people that we are folk whom you desire
+shall live in the shadow of the king's hut, then you live. Let him say
+less than this, Bosambo, and you strike quickly."
+
+The king looked from face to face. Bones had his hand in the uniform
+jacket pocket. Bosambo balanced his killing-spear on the palm of his
+hand, the chief saw with the eye of an expert that the edge was razor
+sharp.
+
+Then he turned to the group whom Bones had motioned away when he started
+to speak to the king.
+
+"This palaver is finished," he said, "and the white lord stays in my hut
+for a night."
+
+"Good egg," said Bones as the crowd streamed from the kraal.
+
+Senhor Bonaventura heard of the arrival of a white man at the chief's
+great kraal and was not perturbed, because there were certain favourite
+traders who came to the king from time to time. He was more concerned by
+the fact that a labour draft of eight hundred men who had been promised
+by Karata had not yet reached Moanda, but frantic panic came from the
+remarkable information of Karata's eccentricities which had reached him
+from his lieutenant.
+
+The duc's letter may be reproduced.
+
+     "ILLUSTRIOUS AND EXCELLENT SENHOR,
+
+     "It is with joy that I announce to you the most remarkable
+     reformation of King Karata. The news was brought to me that the
+     king had received a number of visitors of an unauthorized
+     character, and though I had, as I have reported to you, Illustrious
+     and Excellent Senhor, the most unpleasant experience at the hands
+     of the king, I deemed it advisable to go to the city of the Greater
+     M'fusi and conduct an inquiry.
+
+     "I learnt that the king had indeed received the visitors, and that
+     they had departed on the morning of my arrival carrying with them
+     one of their number who was sick. With this party was a white man.
+     But the most remarkable circumstance, Illustrious and Excellent
+     Senhor, was that the king had called a midnight palaver of his
+     councillors and high people of state and had told them that the
+     strangers had brought news of such sorrowful character that for
+     four moons it would be forbidden to look upon his face. At the end
+     of that period he would disappear from the earth and become a god
+     amongst the stars.
+
+     "At these words, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, the king with
+     some reluctance took from one of the strangers a bag in which two
+     eyes had been cut, and pulled it over his head and went back into
+     his hut.
+
+     "Since then he has done many remarkable things. He has forbidden
+     the importation of drink, and has freed all labour men to their
+     homes. He has nominated Zifingini, the elder chief of the M'fusi,
+     to be king after his departure, and has added another fighting
+     regiment to his army.
+
+     "He is quite changed, and though they cannot see his face and he
+     has banished all his wives, relatives and councillors to a distant
+     village, he is more popular than ever.
+
+     "Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, I feel that at last I am seeing
+     the end of the old régime and that we may look forward to a period
+     of sobriety and prosperity in the M'fusi.
+
+     "Receive the assurance, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, of my
+     distinguished consideration."
+
+His Excellency went purple and white.
+
+"Holy mother!" he spluttered apoplectically, "this is ruin!"
+
+With trembling hands he wrote a telegram. Translated in its sense it was
+to this effect--
+
+"Recall de Sagosta without fail or there will be nothing doing on pay
+day."
+
+He saw this dispatched on its way, and returned to his bureau. He picked
+up the duc's letter and read it again: then he saw there was a
+postscript.
+
+     "P.S.--In regard to the strangers who visited the king, the man
+     they carried away on a closed litter was very sick indeed,
+     according to the accounts of woodmen who met the party. He was
+     raving at the top of his voice, but the white man was singing very
+     loudly.
+
+     "P.SS.--I have just heard, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, that
+     the Hooded King (as his people call him) has sent off all his
+     richest treasures and many others which he has taken from the huts
+     of his deported relatives to one Bosambo, who is a chief of the
+     Ochori in British Territory, and is distantly related to Senhor
+     Sanders, the Commissioner of that Territory."
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetter's errors; in all
+other respects, every effort has been made to be true to the author's
+words and intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 25803-8.txt or 25803-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/8/0/25803/
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/25803-8.zip b/25803-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f65d78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-8.zip
diff --git a/25803-h.zip b/25803-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..070ac6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-h.zip
diff --git a/25803-h/25803-h.htm b/25803-h/25803-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88270cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-h/25803-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,7968 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    h1,h2,h3,h4 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         }
+    hr.large          {width: 65%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+    hr.medium         {width: 45%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+
+    div.centered {text-align:center;} /*work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 1 */
+    div.centered table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; text-align:left;} /* work around for IE problem part 2 */
+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
+              } /* page numbers */
+    .right       {text-align: right; padding-right: 15em;}
+    .right2      {text-align: right; padding-right: 10em;}
+    .right3      {text-align: right; padding-right: 25em;}
+    .blockquot   {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+    .center      {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap       {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+    .fnanchor         {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;}
+    .n                {text-indent:0%;}
+    .smallgap          {margin-top: 2em;}
+    .gap               {margin-top: 3em;}
+    .biggap            {margin-top: 6em;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i2     {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i10    {display: block; margin-left: 12em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i30    {display: block; margin-left: 30em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Keepers of the King's Peace
+
+Author: Edgar Wallace
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2008 [EBook #25803]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="smallgap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE KEEPERS OF<br />
+THE KING'S PEACE</h1>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>EDGAR WALLACE</h2>
+
+<p class="biggap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>WARD, LOCK &amp; CO., LIMITED</h2>
+<h3>LONDON AND MELBOURNE</h3>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS LTD.,<br />
+LONDON AND TONBRIDGE</p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="70%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">Chap.</td>
+<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">Page</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">I.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Bones, Sanders and Another</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#THE_KEEPERS_OF_THE_KINGS_PEACE">5</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">II.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Bones Changes his Religion</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">28</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">III.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Maker of Storms</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">53</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IV.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Bones and the Wireless</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">75</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">V.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Remedy</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">99</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VI.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Medicine Man</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">117</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VII.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Bones, King-maker</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">135</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VIII.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Tamer of Beasts</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">154</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IX.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Mercenaries</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">169</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">X.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Waters of Madness</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">191</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XI.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Eye to Eye</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">215</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XII.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Hooded King</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">233</a></td></tr></table></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h4>TO</h4>
+
+<h3>PAT</h3>
+
+<h3>(P. M. C. W.)</h3>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_KEEPERS_OF_THE_KINGS_PEACE" id="THE_KEEPERS_OF_THE_KINGS_PEACE"></a>THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE</h2>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>o Isongo, which stands upon the tributary of that name, came a woman of
+the Isisi who had lost her husband through a providential tree falling
+upon him. I say "providential," for it was notorious that he was an evil
+man, a drinker of beer and a favourite of many bad persons. Also he made
+magic in the forest, and was reputedly the familiar of Bashunbi the
+devil brother of M'shimba-M'shamba. He beat his wives, and once had set
+fire to his house from sheer wickedness. So that when he was borne back
+to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked
+themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped
+through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion
+of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than
+the occasion called for.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>An old man named D'wiri, who knew every step of every dance, saw this
+and said in his stern way that it was shameless. But he was old and was,
+moreover, in fear for the decorum of his own obsequies if these
+outrageous departures from custom were approved or allowed to pass
+without reprimand.</p>
+
+<p>When M'lama, the wife of G'mami, had seen her lord depart in the canoe
+for burial in the middle island and had wailed her conventional grief,
+she washed the dust from her body at the river's edge and went back to
+her hut. And all that was grief for the dead man was washed away with
+the dust of mourning.</p>
+
+<p>Many moons came out of the sky, were wasted and died before the woman
+M'lama showed signs of her gifts. It is said that they appeared one
+night after a great storm wherein lightning played such strange tricks
+upon the river that even the old man D'wiri could not remember parallel
+instances.</p>
+
+<p>In the night the wife of a hunter named E'sani-Osoni brought a dying
+child into the hut of the widow. He had been choked by a fish-bone and
+was <i>in extremis</i> when M'lama put her hand upon his head and straightway
+the bone flew from his mouth, "and there was a cry terrible to
+hear&mdash;such a cry as a leopard makes when he is pursued by ghosts."</p>
+
+<p>A week later a baby girl fell into a terrible fit and M'lama had laid
+her hand upon it and behold! it slept from that moment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>Ahmet, chief of the Government spies, heard of these happenings and came
+a three days' journey by river to Isongo.</p>
+
+<p>"What are these stories of miracles?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Capita</i>," said the chief, using the term of regard which is employed
+in the Belgian Congo, "this woman M'lama is a true witch and has great
+gifts, for she raises the dead by the touch of her hand. This I have
+seen. Also it is said that when U'gomi, the woodcutter, made a fault,
+cutting his foot in two, this woman healed him marvellously."</p>
+
+<p>"I will see this M'lama," said Ahmet importantly.</p>
+
+<p>He found her in her hut tossing four bones idly. These were the shanks
+of goats, and each time they fell differently.</p>
+
+<p>"O Ahmet," she said, when he entered, "you have a wife who is sick, also
+a first-born boy who does not speak though he is more than six seasons
+old."</p>
+
+<p>Ahmet squatted down by her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Woman," said he, "tell me something that is not the talk of river and I
+will believe your magic."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow your master, the lord Sandi, will send you a book which will
+give you happiness," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Every day my lord sends me a book," retorted the sceptical Ahmet, "and
+each brings me happiness. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>Also it is common talk that at this time
+there come messengers carrying bags of silver and salt to pay men
+according to their services."</p>
+
+<p>Undismayed she tried her last shot.</p>
+
+<p>"You have a crooked finger which none can straighten&mdash;behold!"</p>
+
+<p>She took his hand in hers and pressed the injured phlange. A sharp pain
+shot up his arm and he winced, pulling back his hand&mdash;but the year-old
+dislocation which had defied the effort of the coast doctor was
+straightened out, and though the movement was exquisitely painful he
+could bend it.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you are a true witch," he said, greatly impressed, for a native
+has a horror of deformity of any kind, and he sent back word of the
+phenomenon to Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders at the same time was in receipt of other news which alternately
+pleased him and filled him with panic. The mail had come in by fast
+launch and had brought Captain Hamilton of the Houssas a very bulky
+letter written in a feminine hand. He had broken the glad news to
+Commissioner Sanders, but that gentleman was not certain in his mind
+whether the startling intelligence conveyed by the letter was good or
+bad.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure the country will suit her," he said, "this part of the country
+at any rate&mdash;but what will Bones say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!" repeated Captain Hamilton scornfully. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>"What the dickens does
+it matter what Bones says?"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he went to the sea-end of the verandah, and his roar
+rivalled the thunder of the surf.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer and for an excellent reason.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders came out of the bungalow, his helmet on the back of his head, a
+cheroot tilted dizzily.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton turned.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked him to&mdash;at least I didn't ask him, he volunteered&mdash;to peg out a
+trench line."</p>
+
+<p>"Expect an invasion?" asked Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones does," he said. "He's full of the idea, and offered to give me
+tips on the way a trench should be dug&mdash;he's feeling rotten about things
+... you know what I mean. His regiment was at Mons."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," he said quietly. "And you ... you're a jolly good
+soldier, Hamilton&mdash;how do you feel about it all?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"They would have taken me for the Cameroons, but somebody had to stay,"
+he said quietly. "After all, it is one's business to ... to do one's job
+in the station of life to which it has pleased God to call him. This is
+my work ... here."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders laid his hand on the other's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>"That's the game as it should be played," he said, and his blue eyes
+were as soft and as tender as a woman's. "There is no war here&mdash;we are
+the keepers of the King's peace, Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"It's rotten...."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I feel that way myself. We're out of it&mdash;the glory of it&mdash;the
+chance of it&mdash;the tragedy of it. And there are others. Think of the men
+in India eating their hearts out ... praying for the order that will
+carry them from the comfort of their lives to the misery and the
+death&mdash;and the splendour, I grant you&mdash;of war."</p>
+
+<p>He sighed and looked wistfully to the blue sea.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton beckoned a Houssa corporal who was crossing the garden of the
+Residency.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho, Mustaf," he said, in his queer coast Arabic, "where shall I look
+for my lord Tibbetti?"</p>
+
+<p>The corporal turned and pointed to the woods which begin at the back of
+the Residency and carry without a break for three hundred miles.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, he went there carrying many strange things&mdash;also there went with
+him Ali Abid, his servant."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton reached through an open window of the bungalow and fished out
+his helmet with his walking-stick.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll find Bones," he said grimly; "he's been gone three hours and he's
+had time to re-plan Verdun."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>It took some time to discover the working party, but when it was found
+the trouble was well repaid.</p>
+
+<p>Bones was stretched on a canvas chair under the shade of a big Isisi
+palm. His helmet was tipped forward so that the brim rested on the
+bridge of his nose, his thin red arms were folded on his breast, and
+their gentle rise and fall testified to his shame. Two pegs had been
+driven in, and between them a string sagged half-heartedly.</p>
+
+<p>Curled up under a near-by bush was, presumably, Ali Abid&mdash;presumably,
+because all that was visible was a very broad stretch of brown satin
+skin which showed between the waistline of a pair of white cotton
+trousers and a duck jacket.</p>
+
+<p>They looked down at the unconscious Bones for a long time in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What will he say when I kick him?" asked Hamilton. "You can have the
+first guess."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders frowned thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll say that he was thinking out a new system of communicating
+trenches," he said. "He's been boring me to tears over saps and things."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong, sir," he said; "that isn't the lie he'll tell. He will say that
+I kept him up so late last night working at the men's pay-sheets that he
+couldn't keep awake."</p>
+
+<p>Bones slept on.</p>
+
+<p>"He may say that it was coffee after tiffin," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>suggested Sanders after a
+while; "he said the other day that coffee always made him sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"'Swoon' was the word he used, sir," corrected Hamilton. "I don't think
+he'll offer that suggestion now&mdash;the only other excuse I can think of is
+that he was repeating the Bomongo irregular verbs. Bones!"</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and broke off a long grass and inserted it in the right ear
+of Lieutenant Tibbetts, twiddling the end delicately. Bones made a
+feeble clutch at his ear, but did not open his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!" said Hamilton, and kicked him less gently. "Get up, you lazy
+devil&mdash;there's an invasion."</p>
+
+<p>Bones leapt to his feet and staggered a little; blinked fiercely at his
+superior and saluted.</p>
+
+<p>"Enemy on the left flank, sir," he reported stiffly. "Shall we have
+dinner or take a taxi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wake up, Napoleon," begged Hamilton, "you're at Waterloo."</p>
+
+<p>Bones blinked more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I've been unconscious, dear old officer," he confessed. "The
+fact is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to this, everybody," said Hamilton admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, sir," said Bones, with dignity, "I fell asleep&mdash;that
+beastly coffee I had after lunch, added to the fatigue of sittin' up
+half the night with those jolly old accounts of yours, got the better of
+me. I was sittin' down workin' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>out one of the dinkiest little ideas in
+trenches&mdash;a sort of communicatin' trench where you needn't get wet in
+the rainiest weather&mdash;when I&mdash;well, I just swooned off."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton looked disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>"Weren't you doing anything with the Bomongo verbs?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>A light came to Bones's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, sir!" he said heartily, "that was it, of course.... The last
+thing I remember was...."</p>
+
+<p>"Kick that man of yours and come back to the bungalow," Hamilton
+interrupted, "there's a job for you, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>He walked across and stirred the second sleeper with the toe of his
+boot.</p>
+
+<p>Ali Abid wriggled round and sat up.</p>
+
+<p>He was square of face, with a large mouth and two very big brown eyes.
+He was enormously fat, but it was not fat of the flabby type. Though he
+called himself Ali, it was, as Bones admitted, "sheer swank" to do so,
+for this man had "coast" written all over him.</p>
+
+<p>He got up slowly and saluted first his master, then Sanders, and lastly
+Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>Bones had found him at Cape Coast Castle on the occasion of a joy-ride
+which the young officer had taken on a British man-of-war. Ali Abid had
+been the heaven-sent servant, and though Sanders had a horror of natives
+who spoke English, the English of Ali Abid was his very own.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>He had been for five years the servant of Professor Garrileigh, the
+eminent bacteriologist, the account of whose researches in the field of
+tropical medicines fill eight volumes of closely-printed matter, every
+page of which contains words which are not to be found in most lexicons.</p>
+
+<p>They walked back to the Residency, Ali Abid in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to go up to the Isongo, Bones," said Sanders; "there may be
+some trouble there&mdash;a woman is working miracles."</p>
+
+<p>"He might get a new head," murmured Hamilton, but Bones pretended not to
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>"Use your tact and get back before the 17th for the party."</p>
+
+<p>"The&mdash;&mdash;?" asked Bones.</p>
+
+<p>He had an irritating trick of employing extravagant gestures of a fairly
+commonplace kind. Thus, if he desired to hear a statement
+repeated&mdash;though he had heard it well enough the first time&mdash;he would
+bend his head with a puzzled wrinkle of forehead, put his hand to his
+ear and wait anxiously, even painfully, for the repetition.</p>
+
+<p>"You heard what the Commissioner said," growled Hamilton.
+"Party&mdash;P-A-R-T-Y."</p>
+
+<p>"My birthday is not until April, your Excellency," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd guess the date&mdash;but what's the use?" interposed Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a birthday party, Bones," said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>Sanders. "We are giving a
+house-warming for Miss Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>Bones gasped, and turned an incredulous eye upon his chief.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't a sister, surely, dear old officer?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why the dickens shouldn't I have a sister?" demanded his chief.</p>
+
+<p>Bones shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"A matter of deduction, sir," he said quietly. "Absence of all evidence
+of a soothin' and lovin' influence in your lonely an' unsympathetic
+upbringin'; hardness of heart an' a disposition to nag, combined with a
+rough and unpromisin' exterior&mdash;a sister, good Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, she's coming, Bones," said Hamilton; "and she's looking forward
+to seeing you&mdash;I've written an awful lot about you."</p>
+
+<p>Bones smirked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said, "you've overdone it a bit&mdash;women hate to be
+disillusioned. What you ought to have done, sir, is to describe me as a
+sort of ass&mdash;genial and all that sort of thing, but a commonplace sort
+of ass."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"That's exactly what I've done, Bones," he said. "I told her how Bosambo
+did you in the eye for twenty pounds, and how you fell into the water
+looking for buried treasure, and how the Isisi tried to sell you a
+flying crocodile and would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>have sold it too, if it hadn't been for my
+timely arrival. I told her&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you've said enough, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Bones was very red and very haughty.</p>
+
+<p>"Far be it from me to resent your attitude or contradict your calumnies.
+Miss Hamilton will see very little of me. An inflexible sense of duty
+will keep me away from the frivolous circle of society, sir. Alert an'
+sleepless&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Trenches," said Hamilton brutally.</p>
+
+<p>Bones winced, regarded his superior for a moment with pain, saluted, and
+turning on his heel, stalked away, followed by Ali Abid no less pained.</p>
+
+<p>He left at dawn the next morning, and both Sanders and Hamilton came
+down to the concrete quay to see the <i>Zaire</i> start on her journey.
+Sanders gave his final instructions&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If the woman is upsetting the people, arrest her; if she has too big a
+hold on them, arrest her; but if she is just amusing them, come back."</p>
+
+<p>"And don't forget the 17th," said Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"I may arrive a little late for that," said Bones gravely. "I don't wish
+to be a skeleton at your jolly old festive board, dear old
+sportsman&mdash;you will excuse my absence to Miss Hamilton. I shall probably
+have a headache and all that sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>He waved a sad farewell as the <i>Zaire</i> passed round the bend of the
+river, and looked, as he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>desired to look, a melancholy figure with his
+huge pipe in his mouth and his hands thrust dejectedly into his trousers
+pockets.</p>
+
+<p>Once out of sight he became his own jovial self.</p>
+
+<p>"Lieutenant Ali," he said, "get out my log and put it in old Sanders'
+cabin, make me a cup of tea and keep her jolly old head east, east by
+north."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir," said Ali in excellent English.</p>
+
+<p>The "log" which Bones kept was one of the secret documents which never
+come under the eye of the superior authorities. There were such entries
+as&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Wind N.N.W. Sea calm. Hostile craft sighted on port bow, at 10.31
+a.m. General Quarters sounded 10.32. Interrogated Captain of the
+hostile craft and warned him not to fish in fair-way. Sighted Cape
+M'Gooboori 12.17, stopped for lunch and wood."</p></div>
+
+<p>What though Cape M'Gooboori was the village of that name and the "calm
+sea" was no more than the placid bosom of the Great River? What though
+Bones's "hostile craft" was a dilapidated canoe, manned by one aged and
+bewildered man of the Isisi engaged in spearing fish? Bones saw all
+things through the rosy spectacles of adventurous youth denied its
+proper share of experience.</p>
+
+<p>At sunset the <i>Zaire</i> came gingerly through the shoals that run out from
+the Isongo beach, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>Bones went ashore to conduct his investigations.
+It chanced that the evening had been chosen by M'lama, the witch, for
+certain wonderful manifestations, and the village was almost deserted.</p>
+
+<p>In a wood and in a place of green trees M'lama sat tossing her sheep
+shanks, and a dense throng of solemn men and women squatted or sat or
+tiptoed about her&mdash;leaving her a respectable space for her operations. A
+bright fire crackled and glowed at her side, and into this, from time to
+time, she thrust little sticks of plaited straw and drew them forth
+blazing and spluttering until with a quick breath she extinguished the
+flame and examined the grey ash.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, all people," she said, "and be silent, lest my great ju-ju
+strike you dead. What man gave me this?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was I, M'lama," said an eager woman, her face wrinkled with
+apprehension as she held up her brown palm.</p>
+
+<p>The witch peered forward at the speaker.</p>
+
+<p>"O F'sela!" she chanted, "there is a man-child for thee who shall be
+greater than chiefs; also you will suffer from a sickness which shall
+make you mad."</p>
+
+<p>"O ko!"</p>
+
+<p>Half dismayed by the promise of her own fate; half exalted by the career
+the witch had sketched for her unborn son, the woman stared
+incredulously, fearfully at the swaying figure by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Again a plaited stick went into the fire, was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>withdrawn and blown out,
+and the woman again prophesied.</p>
+
+<p>And sometimes it was of honours and riches she spoke, and sometimes&mdash;and
+more often&mdash;of death and disaster. Into this shuddering group strode
+Bones, very finely clad in white raiment yet limp withal, for the night
+was close and the way had been long and rough.</p>
+
+<p>The sitters scrambled to their feet, their knuckles at their teeth, for
+this was a moment of great embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, M'lama," said Bones agreeably, and spoke in the soft dialect of the
+Isisi by-the-River, "prophesy for me!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up sullenly, divining trouble for herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," she said, with a certain smooth venom, "there is a great
+sickness for you&mdash;and behold you will go far away and die, and none
+shall miss you."</p>
+
+<p>Bones went very red, and shook an indignant forefinger at the offending
+prophetess.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a wicked old storyteller!" he stammered. "You're depressin' the
+people&mdash;you naughty girl! I hate you&mdash;I simply loathe you!"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke in English she was not impressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' about the country puttin' people off their grub, by Jove!" he
+stormed; "tellin' stories ... oh, dash it, I shall have to be awfully
+severe with you!"</p>
+
+<p>Severe he was, for he arrested her, to the relief <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>of her audience, who
+waited long enough to discover whether or not her ju-ju would strike him
+dead, and being obviously disappointed by her failure to provide this
+spectacle, melted away.</p>
+
+<p>Close to the gangway of the <i>Zaire</i> she persuaded one of her Houssa
+guard to release his hold. She persuaded him by the simple expedient of
+burying her sharp white teeth in the fleshy part of his arm&mdash;and bolted.
+They captured her half mad with panic and fear of her unknown fate, and
+brought her to the boat.</p>
+
+<p>Bones, fussing about the struggling group, dancing with excitement, was
+honourably wounded by the chance contact of his nose with a wild and
+whirling fist.</p>
+
+<p>"Put her in the store cabin!" he commanded breathlessly. "Oh, what a
+wicked woman!"</p>
+
+<p>In the morning as the boat got under way Ali came to him with a
+distressing story.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Excellency will be pained to hear," he said, "that the female
+prisoner has eradicated her costume."</p>
+
+<p>"Eradicated...?" repeated the puzzled Bones, gently touching the patch
+of sticking-plaster on his nose.</p>
+
+<p>"In the night," explained this former slave of science, "the subject has
+developed symptoms of mania, and has entirely dispensed with her
+clothes&mdash;to wit, by destruction."</p>
+
+<p>"She's torn up her clothes?" gasped Bones, his hair rising and Ali
+nodded.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>Now, the dress of a native woman varies according to the degree in which
+she falls under missionary influence. Isongo was well within the sphere
+of the River Mission, and so M'lama's costume consisted of a
+tight-fitting piece of print which wound round and round the body in the
+manner of a kilt, covering the figure from armpit to feet.</p>
+
+<p>Bones went to the open window of the prison cabin, and steadfastly
+averting his gaze, called&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"M'lama!"</p>
+
+<p>No reply came, and he called again.</p>
+
+<p>"M'lama," he said gently, in the river dialect, "what shall Sandi say to
+this evil that you do?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no reply, only a snuffling sound of woe.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ai!" sobbed the voice.</p>
+
+<p>"M'lama, presently we shall come to the Mission house where the God-men
+are, and I will bring you clothing&mdash;these you will put on you," said
+Bones, still staring blankly over the side of the ship at the waters
+which foamed past her low hull; "for if my lord Sandi see you as I see
+you&mdash;I mean as I wouldn't for the world see you, you improper person,"
+he corrected himself hastily in English&mdash;"if my lord Sandi saw you, he
+would feel great shame. Also," he added, as a horrible thought made him
+go cold all over, "also the lady who comes to my lord Militini&mdash;oh,
+lor!"</p>
+
+<p>These last two words were in English.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>Fortunately there was a Jesuit settlement near by, and here Bones
+stopped and interviewed the stout and genial priest in charge.</p>
+
+<p>"It's curious how they all do it," reflected the priest, as he led the
+way to his storehouse. "I've known 'em to tear up their clothes in an
+East End police cell&mdash;white folk, the same as you and I."</p>
+
+<p>He rummaged in a big box and produced certain garments.</p>
+
+<p>"My last consignment from a well-meaning London congregation," he
+smiled, and flung out a heap of dresses, hats, stockings and shoes. "If
+they'd sent a roll or two of print I might have used them&mdash;but strong
+religious convictions do not entirely harmonize with a last year's Paris
+model."</p>
+
+<p>Bones, flushed and unhappy, grabbed an armful of clothing, and showering
+the chuckling priest with an incoherent medley of apology and thanks,
+hurried back to the <i>Zaire</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Behold, M'lama," he said, as he thrust his loot through the window of
+the little deck-house, "there are many grand things such as great ladies
+wear&mdash;now you shall appear before Sandi beautiful to see."</p>
+
+<p>He logged the happening in characteristic language, and was in the midst
+of this literary exercise when the tiny steamer charged a sandbank, and
+before her engines could slow or reverse she had slid to the top and
+rested in two feet of water.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>A rueful Bones surveyed the situation and returned to his cabin to
+conclude his diary with&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"12.19 struck a reef off B'lidi Bay. Fear vessel total wreck. Boats
+all ready for lowering."</p></div>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact there were neither boats to lower nor need to lower
+them, because the crew were already standing in the river (up to their
+hips) and were endeavouring to push the <i>Zaire</i> to deep water.</p>
+
+<p>In this they were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours
+until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the
+<i>Zaire</i> clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of
+his salvage.</p>
+
+<p>He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck,
+and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal
+she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore
+a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced
+deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing
+ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.</p>
+
+<p>"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the journey was uneventful until the <i>Zaire</i> had reached the
+northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on
+which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had
+isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.</p>
+
+<p>Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea
+through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and
+western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the
+bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with
+a sense of his resourcefulness&mdash;and incidentally present himself in the
+most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily
+life.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now....</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Zaire</i> was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and
+agile person might have stepped ashore.</p>
+
+<p>M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.</p>
+
+<p>He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the
+space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in
+such breeze as there was.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi! Don't do that ... naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but
+she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of
+the <i>Zaire</i> began to thresh madly astern.</p>
+
+<p>Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An
+ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>no
+ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing
+propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one
+stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed,
+in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in
+the direction the fugitive had taken.</p>
+
+<p>For a little time he did not see her, then he glimpsed the white of a
+pique dress, and with a yell of admonition started in pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>She stood hesitating a moment, then fled, but he was on her before she
+had gone a dozen yards; the counterpane was flung over her head, and
+though she kicked and struggled and indulged in muffled squeaks, he
+lifted her up in his arms and staggered back to the boat.</p>
+
+<p>They ran out a gangway plank and across this he passed with his burden,
+declining all offers of assistance.</p>
+
+<p>"Close the window," he gasped; "open the door&mdash;now, you naughty old
+lady!"</p>
+
+<p>He bundled her in, counterpane enmeshed and reduced to helpless silence,
+slammed the door and leant panting against the cabin, mopping his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"Phew!" said Bones, and repeated the inelegant remark many times. All
+this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and
+Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important young man who saluted
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"All correct, sir," said Bones, stiff as a ramrod; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>"no
+casualties&mdash;except as per my nose which will be noted in the margin of
+my report&mdash;one female prisoner secured after heroic chase, which, I
+trust, sir, you will duly report to my jolly old superiors&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't gas so much, Bones," said Hamilton. "Come along and meet my
+sister&mdash;hullo, what the devil's that?"</p>
+
+<p>They turned with one accord to the forest path.</p>
+
+<p>Two native policemen were coming towards them, and between them a
+bedraggled M'lama, her skirt all awry, her fine hat at a rakish angle,
+stepped defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens!" said Bones, "she's got away again.... That's my prisoner,
+dear old officer!"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope she hasn't frightened Pat ... she was walking in the
+reservation."</p>
+
+<p>Bones did not faint, his knees went from under him, but he recovered by
+clutching the arm of his faithful Ali.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old friend," he murmured brokenly, "accidents ... error of
+judgment ... the greatest tragedy of my life...."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you?" demanded Sanders in alarm, for the face of
+Bones was ghastly.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Tibbetts made no reply, but walked with unsteady steps to the
+lock-up, fumbled with the key and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>There stepped forth a dishevelled and wrathful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>girl (she was a little
+scared, too, I suspect), the most radiant and lovely figure that had
+ever dawned upon the horizon of Bones.</p>
+
+<p>She looked from her staggered brother to Sanders, from Sanders to her
+miserable custodian.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth&mdash;&mdash;" began Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>Then her lips twitched and she fell into a fit of uncontrollable
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"If," said Bones huskily, "if in an excess of zeal I mistook ... in the
+gloamin', madame ... white dress...."</p>
+
+<p>He spread out his arms in a gesture of extravagant despair.</p>
+
+<p>"I can do no more than a gentleman.... I have a loaded revolver in my
+cabin ... farewell!"</p>
+
+<p>He bowed deeply to the girl, saluted his dumbfounded chief, tripped up
+over a bucket and would have fallen but for Hamilton's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You're an ass," said Hamilton, struggling to preserve his sense of
+annoyance. "Pat&mdash;this is Lieutenant Tibbetts, of whom I have often
+written."</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at Bones, her eyes moist with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I guessed it from the first," she said, and Bones writhed.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">C</span>aptain
+ Hamilton of the King's Houssas had two responsibilities in life,
+a sister and a subaltern.</p>
+
+<p>The sister's name was Patricia Agatha, the subaltern had been born
+Tibbetts, christened Augustus, and named by Hamilton in his arbitrary
+way, "Bones."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst sister and subaltern were separated from one another by some
+three thousand miles of ocean&mdash;as far, in fact, as the Coast is from
+Bradlesham Thorpe in the County of Hampshire&mdash;Captain Hamilton bore his
+responsibilities without displaying a sense of the burden.</p>
+
+<p>When Patricia Hamilton decided on paying a visit to her brother she did
+so with his heartiest approval, for he did not realize that in bringing
+his two responsibilities face to face he was not only laying the
+foundation of serious trouble, but was actually engaged in erecting the
+fabric.</p>
+
+<p>Pat Hamilton had come and had been boisterously welcomed by her brother
+one white-hot morning, Houssas in undress uniform lining the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>beach and
+gazing solemnly upon Militini's riotous joy. Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
+C.M.G., had given her a more formal welcome, for he was a little scared
+of women. Bones, as we know, had not been present&mdash;which was unfortunate
+in more ways than one.</p>
+
+<p>It made matters no easier for the wretched Bones that Miss Hamilton was
+an exceedingly lovely lady. Men who live for a long time in native lands
+and see little save beautiful figures displayed without art and with
+very little adornment, are apt to regard any white woman with regular
+features as pretty, when the vision comes to them after a long interval
+spent amidst native people. But it needed neither contrast nor
+comparison to induce an admiration for Captain Hamilton's sister.</p>
+
+<p>She was of a certain Celtic type, above the medium height, with the
+freedom of carriage and gait which is the peculiar possession of her
+country-women. Her face was a true oval, and her complexion of that kind
+which tans readily but does not freckle.</p>
+
+<p>Eyes and mouth were firm and steadfast; she was made for ready laughter,
+yet she was deep enough, and in eyes and mouth alike you read a
+tenderness beyond disguise. She had a trinity of admirers: her brother's
+admiration was natural and critical; Sanders admired and feared;
+Lieutenant Tibbetts admired and resented.</p>
+
+<p>From the moment when Bones strode off after <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>the painful discovery, had
+slammed the door of his hut and had steadfastly declined all manner of
+food and sustenance, he had voluntarily cut himself off from his kind.</p>
+
+<p>He met Hamilton on parade the following morning, hollow-eyed (as he
+hoped) after a sleepless night, and there was nothing in his attitude
+suggestive of the deepest respect and the profoundest regard for that
+paragraph of King's Regulations which imposes upon the junior officer a
+becoming attitude of humility in the presence of his superior officer.</p>
+
+<p>"How is your head, Bones?" asked Hamilton, after the parade had been
+dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Bones bitterly&mdash;though why he should be bitter at
+the kindly inquiry only he knew&mdash;"thank you, sir, it is about the same.
+My temperature is&mdash;or was&mdash;up to one hundred and four, and I have been
+delirious. I wouldn't like to say, dear old&mdash;sir, that I'm not nearly
+delirious now."</p>
+
+<p>"Come up to tiffin," invited Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>Bones saluted&mdash;a sure preliminary to a dramatic oration.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," he said firmly, "you've always been a jolly old officer to me
+before this contretemps wrecked my young life&mdash;but I shall never be
+quite the same man again, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be an ass," begged Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Revile me, sir," said Bones dismally; "give me a dangerous mission, one
+of those jolly old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>adventures where a feller takes his life in one
+hand, his revolver in the other, but don't ask me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My sister wants to see you," said Hamilton, cutting short the flow of
+eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha, ha!" laughed Bones hollowly, and strode into his hut.</p>
+
+<p>"And what I'm going to do with him, Heaven knows," groaned Hamilton at
+tiffin. "The fact is, Pat, your arrival on the scene has thoroughly
+demoralized him."</p>
+
+<p>The girl folded her serviette and walked to the window, and stood
+looking out over the yellow stretch of the deserted parade-ground.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to call on Bones," she said suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Bones!" murmured Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"That's very rude!" She took down her solar helmet from the peg behind
+the door and adjusted it carefully. Then she stepped through the open
+door, whistling cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you don't mind, sir," apologized Hamilton, "but we've never
+succeeded in stopping her habit of whistling."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be strange if she didn't whistle," he said cryptically.</p>
+
+<p>Bones was lying on his back, his hands behind his head. A half-emptied
+tin of biscuits, no less than the remnants of a box of chocolates,
+indicated that anchorite as he was determined to be, his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>austerity did
+not run in the direction of starvation.</p>
+
+<p>His mind was greatly occupied by a cinematograph procession of
+melancholy pictures. Perhaps he would go away, far, far, into the
+interior. Even into the territory of the great king where a man's life
+is worth about five cents net. And as day by day passed and no news came
+of him&mdash;as how could it when his habitation was marked by a cairn of
+stones?&mdash;she would grow anxious and unhappy. And presently messengers
+would come bringing her a few poor trinkets he had bequeathed to her&mdash;a
+wrist-watch, a broken sword, a silver cigarette-case dented with the
+arrow that slew him&mdash;and she would weep silently in the loneliness of
+her room.</p>
+
+<p>And perhaps he would find strength to send a few scrawled words asking
+for her pardon, and the tears would well up in her beautiful grey
+eyes&mdash;as they were already welling in Bones's eyes at the picture he
+drew&mdash;and she would know&mdash;all.</p>
+
+<p>"Phweet!"</p>
+
+<p>Or else, maybe he would be stricken down with fever, and she would want
+to come and nurse him, but he would refuse.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her," he would say weakly, but oh, so bravely, "tell her ... I ask
+only ... her pardon."</p>
+
+<p>"Phweet!"</p>
+
+<p>Bones heard the second whistle. It came from the open window immediately
+above his head. A <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>song bird was a rare visitor to these parts, but he
+was too lazy and too absorbed to look up.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps (he resumed) she would never see him again, never know the deep
+sense of injustice....</p>
+
+<p>"Phwee&mdash;et!"</p>
+
+<p>It was clearer and more emphatic, and he half turned his head to
+look&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He was on his feet in a second, his hand raised to his damp forehead,
+for leaning on the window sill, her lips pursed for yet another whistle,
+was the lady of his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>She met his eyes sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Come outside&mdash;misery!" she said, and Bones gasped and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean," she demanded, "by sulking in your wretched little
+hut when you ought to be crawling about on your hands and knees begging
+my pardon?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones," said this outrageous girl, shaking her head reprovingly, "you
+want a jolly good slapping!"</p>
+
+<p>Bones extended his bony wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Slap!" he said defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>He had hardly issued the challenge when a very firm young palm, driven
+by an arm toughened by a long acquaintance with the royal and ancient
+game, came "Smack!" and Bones winced.</p>
+
+<p>"Play the game, dear old Miss Hamilton," he said, rubbing his wrist.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>"Play the game yourself, dear old Bones," she mimicked him. "You ought
+to be ashamed of yourself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let bygones be bygones, jolly old Miss Hamilton," begged Bones
+magnanimously. "And now that I see you're a sport, put it there, if it
+weighs a ton."</p>
+
+<p>And he held out his nobbly hand and caught the girl's in a grip that
+made her grimace.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later he was walking her round the married quarters of his
+Houssas, telling her the story of his earliest love affair. She was an
+excellent listener, and seldom interrupted him save to ask if there was
+any insanity in his family, or whether the girl was short-sighted; in
+fact, as Bones afterwards said, it might have been Hamilton himself.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth are they finding to talk about?" wondered Sanders,
+watching the confidences from the depths of a big cane chair on the
+verandah.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones," replied Hamilton lazily, "is telling her the story of his life
+and how he saved the territories from rebellion. He's also begging her
+not to breathe a word of this to me for fear of hurting my feelings."</p>
+
+<p>At that precise moment Bones was winding up a most immodest recital of
+his accomplishments with a less immodest footnote.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, dear old Miss Hamilton," he was saying, lowering his voice,
+"I shouldn't like a word <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>of this to come to your jolly old brother's
+ears. He's an awfully good sort, but naturally in competition with an
+agile mind like mine, understanding the native as I do, he hasn't an
+earthly&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you write the story of your adventures?" she asked
+innocently. "It would sell like hot cakes."</p>
+
+<p>Bones choked with gratification.</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely my idea&mdash;oh, what a mind you've got! What a pity it doesn't
+run in the family! I'll tell you a precious secret&mdash;not a word to
+anybody&mdash;honest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Honest," she affirmed.</p>
+
+<p>Bones looked round.</p>
+
+<p>"It's practically ready for the publisher," he whispered, and stepped
+back to observe the effect of his words.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head in admiration, her eyes were dancing with delight,
+and Bones realized that here at last he had met a kindred soul.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be awfully interesting to write books," she sighed. "I've
+tried&mdash;but I can never invent anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, in my case&mdash;&mdash;" corrected Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you just sit down with a pen in your hand and imagine all
+sorts of things," she mused, directing her feet to the Residency.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the story of my life," explained Bones earnestly. "Not
+fiction ... but all sorts of adventures that actually happened."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>"To whom?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"To me," claimed Bones, louder than was necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't start 'Oh-ing,'" said Bones in a huff. "If you and I are going to
+be good friends, dear old Miss Hamilton, don't say 'Oh!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a bully, Bones." She turned on him so fiercely that he shrank
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"Play the game," he said feebly; "play the game, dear old sister!"</p>
+
+<p>She led him captive to the stoep and deposited him in the easiest chair
+she could find.</p>
+
+<p>From that day he ceased to be anything but a slave, except on one point.</p>
+
+<p>The question of missions came up at tiffin, and Miss Hamilton revealed
+the fact that she favoured the High Church and held definite views on
+the clergy.</p>
+
+<p>Bones confessed that he was a Wesleyan.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to tell me that you're a Nonconformist?" she asked
+incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my dinky little religion, dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones.
+"I'd have gone into the Church only I hadn't enough&mdash;enough&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Brains?" suggested Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Call is the word," said Bones. "I wasn't called&mdash;or if I was I was
+out&mdash;haw-haw! That's a rippin' little bit of persiflage, Miss Hamilton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Be serious, Bones," said the girl; "you mustn't joke about things."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>She put him through a cross-examination to discover the extent of his
+convictions. In self-defence Bones, with only the haziest idea of the
+doctrine he defended, summarily dismissed certain of Miss Hamilton's
+most precious beliefs.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Bones," she persisted, "if I asked you to change&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bones shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old friend," he said solemnly, "there are two things I'll never
+do&mdash;alter the faith of my distant but happy youth, or listen to one
+disparagin' word about the jolliest old sister that ever&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, Bones," she said, with dignity. "I can see that you don't
+like me as I thought you did&mdash;what do you think, Mr. Sanders?"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly judge&mdash;you see," he added apologetically, "I'm a Wesleyan
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Patricia, and fled in confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Bones rose in silence, crossed to his chief and held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Brother," he said brokenly.</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil are you doing?" snarled Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"Spoken like a true Christian, dear old Excellency and sir," murmured
+Bones. "We'll bring her back to the fold."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped nimbly to the door, and the serviette ring that Sanders threw
+with unerring aim caught his angular shoulder as he vanished.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>That same night Sanders had joyful news to impart. He came into the
+Residency to find Bones engaged in mastering the art of embroidery under
+the girl's tuition.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders interrupted what promised to be a most artistic execution.</p>
+
+<p>"Who says a joy-ride to the upper waters of the Isisi?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton jumped up.</p>
+
+<p>"Joy-ride?" he said, puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"We leave to-morrow for the Lesser Isisi to settle a religious
+palaver&mdash;Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is getting a little too
+enthusiastic a Christian, and Ahmet has been sending some queer reports.
+I've been putting off the palaver for weeks, but Administration says it
+has no objection to my making a picnic of duty&mdash;so we'll all go."</p>
+
+<p>"Tri-umph!" said Hamilton. "Bones, leave your needlework and go overhaul
+the stores."</p>
+
+<p>Bones, kneeling on a chair, his elbows on the table, looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"As jolly old Francis Drake said when the Spanish Armada&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To the stores, you insubordinate beggar!" commanded Hamilton, and Bones
+made a hurried exit.</p>
+
+<p>The accommodation of the <i>Zaire</i> was limited, but there was the launch,
+a light-draught boat which was seldom used except for tributary work.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>"I could put Bones in charge of the <i>Wiggle</i>," he said, "but he'd be
+pretty sure to smash her up. Miss Hamilton will have my cabin, and you
+and I could take the two smaller cabins."</p>
+
+<p>Bones, to whom it was put, leapt at the suggestion, brushing aside all
+objections. They were answered before they were framed.</p>
+
+<p>As for the girl, she was beside herself with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Will there be any fighting?" she asked breathlessly. "Shall we be
+attacked?"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders shook his head smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>"All you have to do," said Bones confidently, "is to stick to me. Put
+your faith in old Bones. When you see the battle swayin' an' it isn't
+certain which way it's goin', look for my jolly old banner wavin' above
+the stricken field."</p>
+
+<p>"And be sure it <i>is</i> his banner," interrupted Hamilton, "and not his
+large feet. Now the last time we had a fight...."</p>
+
+<p>And he proceeded to publish and utter a scandalous libel, Bones
+protesting incoherently the while.</p>
+
+<p>The expedition was on the point of starting when Hamilton took his
+junior aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones," he said, not unkindly, "I know you're a whale of a navigator,
+and all that sort of thing, and my sister, who has an awfully keen sense
+of humour, would dearly love to see you at the helm of the <i>Wiggle</i>, but
+as the Commissioner wants to make a holiday, I think it would be best if
+you left the steering to one of the boys."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>Bones drew himself up stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old officer," he said aggrieved, "I cannot think that you wish to
+speak disparagingly of my intelligence&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Get that silly idea out of your head," said Hamilton. "That is just
+what I'm trying to do."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm under your jolly old orders, sir," Bones said with the air of an
+early Christian martyr, "and according to Paragraph 156 of King's
+Regulations&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us go into that," said Hamilton. "I'm not giving you any
+commands, I'm merely making a sensible suggestion. Of course, if you
+want to make an ass of yourself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have never had the slightest inclination that way, cheery old sir,"
+said Bones, "and I'm not likely at my time of life to be influenced by
+my surroundings."</p>
+
+<p>He saluted again and made his way to the barracks. Bones had a
+difficulty in packing his stores. In truth they had all been packed
+before he reached the <i>Wiggle</i>, and to an unprofessional eye they were
+packed very well indeed, but Bones had them turned out and packed <i>his</i>
+way. When that was done, and it was obvious to the meanest intelligence
+that the <i>Wiggle</i> was in terrible danger of capsizing before she
+started, the stores were unshipped and rearranged under the directions
+of the fuming Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>When the third packing was completed, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>general effect bore a
+striking resemblance to the position of the stores as Bones had found
+them when he came to the boat. When everybody was ready to start, Bones
+remembered that he had forgotten his log-book, and there was another
+wait.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got everything now?" asked Sanders wearily, leaning over the
+rail.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything, sir," said Bones, with a salute to his superior, and a
+smile to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got your hot-water bottle and your hair-curlers?" demanded
+Hamilton offensively.</p>
+
+<p>Bones favoured him with a dignified stare, made a signal to the
+engineer, and the <i>Wiggle</i> started forward, as was her wont, with a jerk
+which put upon Bones the alternative of making a most undignified sprawl
+or clutching a very hot smoke-stack. He chose the latter, recovered his
+balance with an easy grace, punctiliously saluted the tiny flag of the
+<i>Zaire</i> as he whizzed past her, and under the very eyes of Hamilton,
+with all the calmness in the world, took the wheel from the steersman's
+hand and ran the <i>Wiggle</i> ashore.</p>
+
+<p>All this he did in the brief space of three minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"And," said Hamilton, exasperated to a degree, "if you'd only broken
+your infernal head, the accident would have been worth it."</p>
+
+<p>It took half an hour for the <i>Wiggle</i> to get afloat again. She had run
+up the beach, and it was necessary to unload the stores, carry them back
+to the quay and reload her again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>"<i>Now</i> are you ready?" said Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir," said Bones, abased but nautical.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>Bucongo, the chief of the Lesser Isisi folk, had a dispute with his
+brother-in-law touching a certain matter which affected his honour. It
+affected his life eventually, since his relative was found one morning
+dead of a spear-thrust. This Sanders discovered after the big trial
+which followed certain events described hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The brother-in-law in his malice had sworn that Bucongo held communion
+with devils. It is a fact that Bucongo had, at an early age, been
+captured by Catholic missionaries, and had spent an uncomfortable youth
+mastering certain mysterious rites and ceremonies. His brother-in-law
+had been in the blessed service of another missionary who taught that
+God lived in the river, and that to fully benefit by his ju-ju it was
+necessary to be immersed in the flowing stream.</p>
+
+<p>Between the water-God men and the cross-God men there was ever a feud,
+each speaking disparagingly of the other, though converts to each creed
+had this in common, that neither understood completely the faith into
+which they were newly admitted. The advantage lay with the Catholic
+converts because they were given a pewter medal with hearts and sunlike
+radiations engraved thereon (this medal was admittedly a cure for
+toothache and pains in the stomach), whilst the Protestants had little
+beyond a mysterious something <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>that they referred to as A'lamo&mdash;which
+means Grace.</p>
+
+<p>But when taunted by their medal-flaunting rivals and challenged to
+produce this "Grace," they were crestfallen and ashamed, being obliged
+to admit that A'lamo was an invisible magic which (they stoutly
+affirmed) was nevertheless an excellent magic, since it preserved one
+from drowning and cured warts and boils.</p>
+
+<p>Bucongo, the most vigorous partisan of the cross-God men, and an
+innovator of ritual, found amusement in watching the Baptist
+missionaries standing knee-deep in the river washing the souls of the
+converts.</p>
+
+<p>He had even been insolent to young Ferguson, the earnest leader of the
+American Baptist Mission, and to his intense amazement had been suddenly
+floored with a left-hander delivered by the sometime Harvard middle
+weight.</p>
+
+<p>He carried his grievance and a lump on his jaw to Mr. Commissioner
+Sanders, who had arrived at the junction of the Isisi and the N'gomi
+rivers and was holding his palaver, and Sanders had been unsympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"Go worship your God in peace," said Sanders, "and let all other men
+worship theirs; and say no evil word to white men for these are very
+quick to anger. Also it is unbecoming that a black man should speak
+scornfully to his masters."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Bucongo, "in heaven all men are as one, black or white."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>"In heaven," said Sanders, "we will settle that palaver, but here on the
+river we hold our places by our merits. To-morrow I come to your village
+to inquire into certain practices of which the God-men know
+nothing&mdash;this palaver is finished."</p>
+
+<p>Now Bucongo was something more than a convert. He was a man of singular
+intelligence and of surprising originality. He had been a lay missioner
+of the Church, and had made many converts to a curious religion, the
+ritual of which was only half revealed to the good Jesuit fathers when
+at a great palaver which Bucongo summoned to exhibit his converts, the
+Church service was interspersed with the sacrifice of a goat and a weird
+procession and dance which left the representative of The Order
+speechless. Bucongo was called before a conference of the Mission and
+reprimanded.</p>
+
+<p>He offered excuses, but there was sufficient evidence to prove that this
+enthusiastic Christian had gone systematically to work, to found what
+amounted to a religion of his own.</p>
+
+<p>The position was a little delicate, and any other Order than the Jesuits
+might have hesitated to tackle a reform which meant losing a very large
+membership.</p>
+
+<p>The fate of Bucongo's congregation had been decided when, in his anger,
+he took canoe, and travelling for half a day, came to the principal
+Mission.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>Father Carpentier, full-bearded, red of face and brawny of arm, listened
+in the shade of his hut, pulling thoughtfully at a long pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"And so, Pentini," concluded Bucongo, "even Sandi puts shame upon me
+because I am a cross-God man, and he by all accounts is of the water-God
+ju-ju."</p>
+
+<p>The father eyed this perturbed sheep of his flock thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"O Bucongo," he said gently, "in the river lands are many beasts. Those
+which fly and which swim; those that run swiftly and that hide in the
+earth. Now who of these is right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, they are all right but are of different ways," said Bucongo.</p>
+
+<p>Father Carpentier nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Also in the forest are two ants&mdash;one who lives in tree nests, and one
+who has a home deep in the ground. They are of a kind, and have the same
+business. Yet God put it into the little heads of one to climb trees,
+and of the other to burrow deeply. Both are right and neither are wrong,
+save when the tree ant meets the ground ant and fights him. Then both
+are wrong."</p>
+
+<p>The squatting Bucongo rose sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Master," he said, "these mysteries are too much for a poor man. I think
+I know a better ju-ju, and to him I go."</p>
+
+<p>"You have no long journey, Chief," said the father sternly, "for they
+tell me stories of ghost dances in the forest and a certain Bucongo who
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>is the leader of these&mdash;and of a human sacrifice. Also of converts who
+are branded with a cross of hot iron."</p>
+
+<p>The chief looked at his sometime tutor with face twisted and puckered
+with rage, and turning without a word, walked back to his canoe.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Father Carpentier sent a messenger to Sanders bearing
+an urgent letter, and Sanders read the closely written lines with a
+troubled frown.</p>
+
+<p>He put down the letter and came out on to the deck, to find Hamilton
+fishing over the side of the steamer. Hamilton looked round.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything wrong?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is wrong," said Sanders. "I have heard of
+his religious meetings and have been a little worried&mdash;there will be a
+big ju-ju palaver or I'm very much mistaken. Where is Bones?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has taken my sister up the creek&mdash;Bones says there are any number of
+egrets' nests there, and I believe he is right."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders frowned again.</p>
+
+<p>"Send a canoe to fetch him back," he said. "That is Bucongo's territory,
+and I don't trust the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Which one&mdash;Bones or Bucongo?" asked Hamilton innocently.</p>
+
+<p>But Sanders was not feeling humorous.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>At that precise moment Bones was sitting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>before the most fantastic
+religious assembly that ecclesiastic or layman had ever attended.</p>
+
+<p>Fate and Bones had led the girl through a very pleasant forest
+glade&mdash;they left the light-draught <i>Wiggle</i> half a mile down stream
+owing to the shoals which barred their progress, and had come upon
+Bucongo in an exalted moment.</p>
+
+<p>With the assurance that he was doing no more than intrude upon one of
+those meetings which the missionizing Chief of the Lesser Isisi so
+frequently held, Bones stood on the outer fringe of the circle which sat
+in silence to watch an unwilling novitiate getting acquainted with
+Bucongo's god.</p>
+
+<p>The novice was a girl, and she lay before an altar of stones surmounted
+by a misshapen <i>beti</i> who glared with his one eye upon the devout
+gathering. The novice lay rigid, for the excellent reason that she was
+roped foot and hands to two pegs in the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Before the altar itself was a fire of wood in which two irons were
+heating.</p>
+
+<p>Bones did not take this in for a moment, for he was gazing open-mouthed
+at Bucongo. On his head was an indubitable mitre, but around the mitre
+was bound a strip of skin from which was suspended a circle of dangling
+monkey tails. For cope he wore a leopard's robe. His face was streaked
+red with camwood, and around his eyes he had painted two white circles.</p>
+
+<p>He was in the midst of a frenzied address when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>the two white visitors
+came upon the scene, and his hand was outstretched to take the red
+branding-iron when the girl at Bones's side, with a little gasp of
+horror, broke into the circle, and wrenching the rough iron from the
+attendant's hand, flung it towards the circle of spectators, which
+widened in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you&mdash;how dare you!" she demanded breathlessly, "you
+horrible-looking man!"</p>
+
+<p>Bucongo glared at her but said nothing; then he turned to meet Bones.</p>
+
+<p>In that second of time Bucongo had to make a great decision, and to
+overcome the habits of a lifetime. Training and education to the
+dominion of the white man half raised his hand to the salute; something
+that boiled and bubbled madly and set his shallow brain afire, something
+that was of his ancestry, wild, unreasoning, brutish, urged other
+action. Bones had his revolver half drawn when the knobbly end of the
+chief's killing-spear struck him between the eyes, and he went down on
+his knees.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came about, that he found himself sitting before Bucongo, his
+feet and hands tied with native grass, with the girl at his side in no
+better case.</p>
+
+<p>She was very frightened, but this she did not show. She had the
+disadvantage of being unable to understand the light flow of offensive
+badinage which passed between her captor and Bones.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>"O Tibbetti," said Bucongo, "you see me as a god&mdash;I have finished with
+all white men."</p>
+
+<p>"Soon we shall finish with you, Bucongo," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot die, Tibbetti," said the other with easy confidence, "that is
+the wonderful thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Other men have said that," said Bones in the vernacular, "and their
+widows are wives again and have forgotten their widowhood."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a new ju-ju, Tibbetti," said Bucongo, a strange light in his
+eyes. "I am the greatest of all cross-God men, and it is revealed to me
+that many shall follow me. Now you and the woman shall be the first of
+all white people to bear the mark of Bucongo the Blessed. And in the
+days to be you shall bare your breasts and say, 'Bucongo the Wonderful
+did this with his beautiful hands.'"</p>
+
+<p>Bones was in a cold sweat and his mouth was dry. He scarcely dare look
+at the girl by his side.</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?" she asked in a low voice. Bones hesitated, and then
+haltingly he stammered the translation of the threat.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"O Bucongo," said Bones, with a sudden inspiration, "though you do evil,
+I will endure. But this you shall do and serve me. Brand me alone upon
+the chest, and upon the back. For if we be branded separately we are
+bound to one another, and you see how ugly this woman is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>with her thin
+nose and her pale eyes; also she has long hair like the grass which the
+weaver birds use for their nests."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke loudly, eagerly, and it seemed convincingly, for Bucongo was in
+doubt. Truly the woman by all standards was very ugly. Her face was
+white and her lips thin. She was a narrow woman too, he thought, like
+one underfed.</p>
+
+<p>"This you shall do for me, Bucongo," urged Bones; "for gods do not do
+evil things, and it would be bad to marry me to this ugly woman who has
+no hips and has an evil tongue."</p>
+
+<p>Bucongo was undecided.</p>
+
+<p>"A god may do no evil," he said; "but I do not know the ways of white
+men. If it be true, then I will mark you twice, Tibbetti, and you shall
+be my man for ever; and the woman I will not touch."</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer oh!" said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you saying&mdash;will he let us go?" asked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sayin' what a jolly row there'll be," lied Bones; "and he was
+sayin' that he couldn't think of hurtin' a charmin' lady like you. Shut
+your eyes, dear old Miss Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>She shut them quickly, half fainting with terror, for Bucongo was coming
+towards them, a blazing iron in his hand, a smile of simple benevolence
+upon his not unintelligent face.</p>
+
+<p>"This shall come as a blessing to you, Tibbetti," he said almost
+jovially.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>Bones shut his teeth and waited.</p>
+
+<p>The hot iron was scorching his silk shirt when a voice hailed the
+high-priest of the newest of cults.</p>
+
+<p>"O Bucongo," it said.</p>
+
+<p>Bucongo turned with a grimace of fear and cringed backward before the
+levelled Colt of Mr. Commissioner Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me now," said Sanders in his even tone, "can such a man as you
+die? Think, Bucongo."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Bucongo huskily, "I think I can die."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see," said Sanders.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>It was not until after dinner that night that the girl had recovered
+sufficiently to discuss her exciting morning.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you were an awful brute," she addressed her unabashed brother.
+"You were standing in the wood listening to and seeing everything, and
+never came till the last minute."</p>
+
+<p>"It was my fault," interrupted Sanders. "I wanted to see how far the
+gentle Bucongo would go."</p>
+
+<p>"Dooced thoughtless," murmured Bones under his breath, but audible.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him long and earnestly then turned again to her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing I want to know," she said. "What was Bones saying
+when he talked to that horrible man? Do you know that Bones was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>scowling at me as though I was ... I hardly know how to express it. Was
+he saying nice things?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton looked up at the awning, and cleared his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Play the game, dear old sir and brother-officer," croaked Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"He said&mdash;&mdash;" began Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Live an' let live," pleaded Bones, all of a twitter. "<i>Esprit de corps</i>
+an' discretion, jolly old captain."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton looked at his subordinate steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"He asked to be branded twice in order that you might not be branded
+once," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared at Bones, and her eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bones!" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you ... you are
+a sportsman."</p>
+
+<p>"Carry on," said Bones incoherently, and wept a little at the
+realization of that magnificent moment.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAKER OF STORMS</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">E</span>verybody
+ knows that water drawn from rivers is very bad water, for the
+rivers are the Roads of the Dead, and in the middle of those nights when
+the merest rind of a moon shows, and this slither of light and two
+watchful stars form a triangle pointing to the earth, the spirits rise
+from their graves and walk, "singing deadly songs," towards the lower
+star which is the source of all rivers. If you should be&mdash;which God
+forbid&mdash;on one of those lonely island graveyards on such nights you will
+see strange sights.</p>
+
+<p>The broken cooking-pots which rest on the mounds and the rent linen
+which flutters from little sticks stuck about the graves, grow whole and
+new again. The pots are red and hot as they come from the fire, and the
+pitiful cloths take on the sheen of youth and fold themselves about
+invisible forms. None may see the dead, though it is said that you may
+see the babies.</p>
+
+<p>These the wise men have watched playing at the water's edge, crowing and
+chuckling in the universal language of their kind, staggering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>groggily
+along the shelving beach with outspread arms balancing their uncertain
+steps. On such nights when M'sa beckons the dead world to the source of
+all rivers, the middle islands are crowded with babies&mdash;the dead babies
+of a thousand years. Their spirits come up from the unfathomed deeps of
+the great river and call their mortality from graves.</p>
+
+<p>"How may the waters of the river be acceptable?" asks the shuddering
+N'gombi mother.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore the N'gombi gather their water from the skies in strange
+cisterns of wicker, lined with the leaf of a certain plant which is
+impervious, and even carry their drinking supplies with them when they
+visit the river itself.</p>
+
+<p>There was a certain month in the year, which will be remembered by all
+who attempted the crossing of the Kasai Forest to the south of the
+N'gombi country, when pools and rivulets suddenly dried&mdash;so suddenly,
+indeed, that even the crocodiles, who have an instinct for coming
+drought, were left high and dry, in some cases miles from the nearest
+water, and when the sun rose in a sky unflecked by cloud and gave place
+at nights to a sky so brilliant and so menacing in their fierce and
+fiery nearness that men went mad.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of this month, when an exasperating full moon advertised
+a continuance of the dry spell by its very whiteness, the Chief
+Koosoogolaba-Muchini, or, as he was called, Muchini, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>summoned a council
+of his elder men, and they came with parched throats and fear of death.</p>
+
+<p>"All men know," said Muchini, "what sorrow has come to us, for there is
+a more powerful ju-ju in the land than I remember. He has made M'shimba
+M'shamba afraid so that he has gone away and walks no more in the forest
+with his terrible lightning. Also K'li, the father of pools, has gone
+into the earth and all his little children, and I think we shall die,
+every one of us."</p>
+
+<p>There was a skinny old man, with a frame like a dried goatskin, who made
+a snuffling noise when he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"O Muchini," he said, "when I was a young man there was a way to bring
+M'shimba M'shamba which was most wonderful. In those days we took a
+young maiden and hung her upon a tree&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Those old ways were good," interrupted Muchini; "but I tell you,
+M'bonia, that we can follow no more the old ways since Sandi came to the
+land, for he is a cruel man and hanged my own mother's brother for that
+fine way of yours. Yet we cannot sit and die because of certain magic
+which the Stone Breaker is practising."</p>
+
+<p>Now Bula Matadi ("The Stone Breaker") was in those days the mortal enemy
+of the N'gombi people, who were wont to ascribe all their misfortunes to
+his machinations. To Bula Matadi (which was the generic name by which
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>Government of the Congo Free State was known) was traceable the
+malign perversity of game, the blight of crops, the depredations of
+weaver birds. Bula Matadi encouraged leopards to attack isolated
+travellers, and would on great occasions change the seasons of the year
+that the N'gombi's gardens might come to ruin.</p>
+
+<p>"It is known from one end of the earth to the other that I am a most
+cunning man," Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick of
+self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence; "and whilst even the
+old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini, the son of the terrible and
+crafty G'sombo, the brother of Eleni-N'gombi, I went abroad with my wise
+men and my spies and sought out devils and ghosts in places where even
+the bravest have never been," he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper,
+"to the Ewa-Ewa Mongo, the Very Place of Death."</p>
+
+<p>The gasp of horror from his audience was very satisfying to this little
+chief of the Inner N'gombi, and here was a moment suitable for his
+climax.</p>
+
+<p>"And behold!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>By his side was something covered with a piece of native cloth. This
+covering he removed with a flourish and revealed a small yellow box.</p>
+
+<p>It was most certainly no native manufacture, for its angles were clamped
+with neat brass corner-pieces set flush in the polished wood.</p>
+
+<p>The squatting councillors watched their lord as with easy familiarity he
+opened the lid.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>There were twenty tiny compartments, and in each was a slender glass
+tube, corked and heavily sealed, whilst about the neck of each tube was
+a small white label covered with certain devil marks.</p>
+
+<p>Muchini waited until the sensation he had prepared had had its full
+effect.</p>
+
+<p>"By the Great River which runs to the Allamdani,"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> he said slowly and
+impressively, "were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi to catch
+ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise men, when the moon was calling all
+spirits. They were gathered by the river with little nets and little
+gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught little flies and
+other foolish things and took them to their tent. Then my young men and
+I waited, and when all were gone away we went to their tents and found
+his magic box&mdash;which is full of devils of great power&mdash;Ro!"</p>
+
+<p>He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming. Across the starry dome of the
+sky there had flicked a quick flare of light.</p>
+
+<p>There came a sudden uneasy stirring of leaves, a hushed whisper of
+things as though the forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Then an icy cold breeze smote his cheek, and staring upward, he saw the
+western stars disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.</p>
+
+<p>"M'shimba M'shamba&mdash;he lives!" he roared, and the crash of thunder in
+the forest answered him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was on the furthermost edge of the forest,
+for he was following the impulse of his simple nature and was hunting in
+a country where he had no right to be. The storm (which he cursed,
+having no scruples about river and water, and being wholly sceptical as
+to ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed. Two nights
+later, he sat before the rough hut his men had built, discussing the
+strange ways of the antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened,
+lowering his head till it almost touched the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Clear to his keen ears came the rattle of the distant lokali&mdash;the drum
+that sends messages from village to village and from nation to nation.</p>
+
+<p>"O Secundi," said Bosambo, with a note of seriousness in his voice, "I
+have not heard that call for many moons&mdash;for it is the war call of the
+N'gombi."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, it is no war call," said the old man, shifting his feet for
+greater comfort, "yet it is a call which may mean war, for it calls
+spears to a dance, and it is strange, for the N'gombi have no enemies."</p>
+
+<p>"All men are the enemies of the N'gombi," Bosambo quoted a river saying
+as old as the sun.</p>
+
+<p>He listened again, then rose.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall go back and gather me a village of spears, and bring them to
+the borderland near the road that crosses the river," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"On my life," said the other.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>Muchini, Chief of the Inner N'gombi, a most inflated man and a familiar
+of magical spirits, gathered his spears to some purpose, for two days
+later Bosambo met him by his border and the chiefs greeted one another
+between two small armies.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way do you go, Muchini?" asked Bosambo.</p>
+
+<p>Now, between Muchini and the Chief of the Ochori was a grievance dating
+back to the big war, when Bosambo had slain the N'gombi chief of the
+time with his own hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I go to the river to call a palaver of all free men," said Muchini;
+"for I tell you this, Bosambo, that I have found a great magic which
+will make us greater than Sandi, and it has been prophesied that I shall
+be a king over a thousand times a thousand spears. For I have a small
+box which brings even M'shimba to my call."</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo, a head and shoulders taller than the other, waved his hand
+towards the forest path which leads eventually to the Ochori city.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a fine moment for you, Muchini," he said, "and you shall try
+your great magic on me and upon my young men. For I say that you do not
+go by this way, neither you nor your warriors, since I am the servant of
+Sandi and of his King, and he has sent me here to keep his peace; go
+back to your village, for this is the way to Death."</p>
+
+<p>Muchini glared at his enemy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>"Yet this way I go, Bosambo," he said huskily, and looked over his
+shoulder towards his followers.</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo swung round on one heel, an arm and a leg outstretched in the
+attitude of an athlete who is putting the shot. Muchini threw up his
+wicker shield and pulled back his stabbing-spear, but he was a dead man
+before the weapon was poised.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended the war, and the N'gombi folk went home, never so much as
+striking a blow for the yellow box which Bosambo claimed for himself as
+his own personal loot.</p>
+
+<p>At the time, Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., was blissfully ignorant
+of the miraculous happenings which have been recorded. He was wholly
+preoccupied by the novelty which the presence of Patricia Hamilton
+offered. Never before had a white woman made her home at the Residency,
+and it changed things a little.</p>
+
+<p>She was at times an embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>When Fubini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava, despatched five maidens to
+change Sandi's wicked heart&mdash;Sanders had sent Fubini to the Village of
+Irons for six months for preaching unauthorized magic&mdash;they came, in the
+language of Bones, "doocedly undressed," and Patricia had beaten a
+hurried retreat.</p>
+
+<p>She was sometimes an anxiety, as I have already shown, but was never a
+nuisance. She brought to headquarters an aroma of English spring, a
+clean fragrance that refreshed the heat-jaded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>Commissioner and her
+brother, but which had no perceptible influence upon Bones.</p>
+
+<p>That young officer called for her one hot morning, and Hamilton,
+sprawling on a big cane chair drawn to the shadiest and breeziest end of
+the verandah, observed that Bones carried a wooden box, a drawing-board,
+a pad of paper, two pencils imperfectly concealed behind his large ear,
+and a water-bottle.</p>
+
+<p>"Shop!" said Hamilton lazily. "Forward, Mr. Bones&mdash;what can we do for
+you this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones shaded his eyes and peered into the cool corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Talkin' in your sleep, dear old Commander," he said pleasantly,
+"dreamin' of the dear old days beyond recall."</p>
+
+<p>He struck an attitude and lifted his unmusical voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When life was gay, heigho!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tum tum te tay, heigho!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, tiddly umpty humpty umty do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When life was gay&mdash;dear old officer&mdash;heigho!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Patricia Hamilton stepped out to the verandah in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please, don't make that hooting noise," she appealed to her
+brother. "I'm writing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid," said Hamilton, "it was only Bones singing. Do it
+again, Bones, Pat didn't hear you."</p>
+
+<p>Bones stood erect, his hand to his white helmet.</p>
+
+<p>"Come aboard, my lady," he said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>"I won't keep you a minute, Bones," said the girl, and disappeared into
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing this morning?" asked Hamilton, gazing with
+pardonable curiosity at the box and drawing-board.</p>
+
+<p>"Polishin' up my military studies with Miss Hamilton's kind
+assistance&mdash;botany and applied science, sir," said Bones briskly. "Field
+fortifications, judgin' distance, strategy, Bomongo grammar, field
+cookery an' tropical medicines."</p>
+
+<p>"What has poor little making-up-company-accounts done?" asked Hamilton,
+and Bones blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old officer," he begged, "I'll tackle that little job as soon as I
+get back. I tried to do 'em this mornin' an was four dollars out&mdash;it's
+the regimental cash account that's wrong. People come in and out helpin'
+themselves, and I positively can't keep track of the money."</p>
+
+<p>"As I'm the only person with the key of the regimental cash-box, I
+suppose you mean&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones raised his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I make no accusations, dear old feller&mdash;it's a painful subject. We all
+have those jolly old moments of temptation. I tackle the accounts
+to-night, sir. You mustn't forget that I've a temperament. I'm not like
+you dear old wooden-heads&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shut up," said the weary Hamilton. "So long as you're going to do a
+bit of study, it's all right."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>"Now, Bones," said Patricia, appearing on the scene, "have you got the
+sandwiches?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones made terrifying and warning grimaces.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got the board to lay the cloth and the paper to cover it, and
+the chocolates and the cold tea?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones frowned, and jerked his head in an agony of warning.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, then," said the unconscious betrayer of Lieutenant Tibbetts.
+"Good-bye, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Why 'good-bye,' dear old Hamilton's sister?" asked Bones.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him scornfully and led the way.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget the field fortifications," called Hamilton after them;
+"they eat nicely between slices of strategy."</p>
+
+<p>The sun was casting long shadows eastward when they returned. They had
+not far to come, for the place they had chosen for their picnic was well
+within the Residency reservation, but Bones had been describing on his
+way back one of the remarkable powers he possessed, namely, his ability
+to drag the truth from reluctant and culpable natives. And every time he
+desired to emphasize the point he would stop, lower all his impedimenta
+to the ground, cluttering up the landscape with picnic-box,
+drawing-board, sketching-blocks and the numerous bunches of wild flowers
+he had culled at her request, and press his argument with much
+palm-punching.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>He stopped for the last time on the very edge of the barrack square, put
+down his cargo and proceeded to demolish the doubt she had unwarily
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where you've got an altogether erroneous view of me, dear old
+sister," he said triumphantly. "I'm known up an' down the river as the
+one man that you can't deceive. Go up and ask the Bomongo, drop in on
+the Isisi, speak to the Akasava, an' what will they say? They'll say,
+'No, ma'am, there's no flies on jolly old Bones&mdash;not on your life,
+Harriet!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Then they would be very impertinent," smiled Pat.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Sanders (God bless him!). Ask Ham. Ask&mdash;&mdash;" he was going on
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to camp here, or are you coming in?" she challenged.</p>
+
+<p>Bones gathered up his belongings, never ceasing to talk.</p>
+
+<p>"Fellers like me, dear young friend, make the Empire&mdash;paint the whole
+bally thing red, white an' blue&mdash;'unhonoured an' unsung, until the
+curtain's rung, the boys that made the Empire and the Navy.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Bones, you promised you wouldn't sing," she said reproachfully; "and,
+besides, you're not in the navy."</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't affect the argument," protested Bones, and was rapidly
+shedding his equipment in preparation for another discourse, when she
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>walked on towards Sanders who had come across the square to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>Bones made a dive at the articles he had dropped, and came prancing (no
+other word describes his erratic run) up to Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been telling Miss Hamilton, sir and Excellency, that nobody
+can find things that old Bones&mdash;you'll remember, sir, the episode of
+your lost pyjama legs. Who found 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"You did," said Sanders; "they were sent home in your washing. Talking
+about finding things, read this."</p>
+
+<p>He handed a telegraph form to the young man, and Bones, peering into the
+message until his nose almost touched the paper, read&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Very urgent. Clear the line. Administration.</p>
+
+<p>"To Sanders, Commission River Territories. Message begins. Belgian
+Congo Government reports from Leopoldville, Bacteriological
+Expedition carriers raided on edge of your territory by Inner
+N'gombi people, all stores looted including case of 20 culture
+tubes. Stop. As all these cultures are of virulent diseases,
+inoculate Inner N'gombi until intact tubes recovered. Message
+ends."</p></div>
+
+<p>Bones read it twice, and his face took on an appearance which indicated
+something between great pain and intense vacancy. It was intended to
+convey to the observer the fact that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>Bones was thinking deeply and
+rapidly, and that he had banished from his mind all the frivolities of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, sir&mdash;you wish me to go to the dear old Congo Government
+and apologize&mdash;I shall be ready in ten minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"What I really want you to do," said Sanders patiently, "is to take the
+<i>Wiggle</i> up stream and get that box."</p>
+
+<p>"I quite understand, sir," said Bones, nodding his head. "To-day is the
+8th, to-morrow is the 9th&mdash;the box shall be in your hands on the 15th by
+half-past seven in the evening, dear old sir."</p>
+
+<p>He saluted and turned a baleful glare upon the girl, the import of which
+she was to learn at first hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Duty, Miss Patricia Hamilton! Forgive poor old Bones if he suddenly
+drops the mask of <i>dolce far niente</i>&mdash;I go!"</p>
+
+<p>He saluted again and went marching stiffly to his quarters, with all the
+dignity which an empty lunch-box and a dangling water-bottle would allow
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Bones went forth importantly for the Ochori city, being
+entrusted with the task of holding, so to speak, the right flank of the
+N'gombi country.</p>
+
+<p>"You will use your discretion," Sanders said at parting, "and, of
+course, you must keep your eyes open; if you hear the merest hint that
+the box is in your neighbourhood, get it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>"I think, your Excellency," said Bones, with heavy carelessness, "that I
+have fulfilled missions quite as delicate as this, and as for
+observation, why, the gift runs in my family."</p>
+
+<p>"And runs so fast that you've never caught up with it," growled
+Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>Bones turned haughtily and saluted. It was a salute full of subdued
+offence.</p>
+
+<p>He went joyously to the northward, evolving cunning plans. He stopped at
+every village to make inquiries and to put the unoffending villagers to
+considerable trouble&mdash;for he insisted upon a house-to-house
+search&mdash;before, somewhat wearied by his own zeal, he came to the Ochori.</p>
+
+<p>Chief Bosambo heard of his coming and summoned his councillors.</p>
+
+<p>"Truly has Sandi a hundred ears," he said in dismay, "for it seems that
+he has heard of the slaying of Muchini. Now, all men who are true to me
+will swear to the lord Tibbetti that we know nothing of a killing
+palaver, and that we have not been beyond the trees to the land side of
+the city. This you will all say because you love me; and if any man says
+another thing I will beat him until he is sick."</p>
+
+<p>Bones came and was greeted by the chief&mdash;and Bosambo was carried to the
+beach on a litter.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Bosambo weakly, "now the sight of your simple face will
+make me a well man again. For, lord, I have not left my bed since <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>the
+coming of the rains, and there is strength neither in my hands and
+feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old bird," said Bones sympathetically, "you've been sittin' in a
+draught."</p>
+
+<p>"This I tell you, Tibbetti," Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his
+ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ
+English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I
+have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing,
+being like a dead man&mdash;all this my headman will testify."</p>
+
+<p>Bones's face dropped, for he had hoped to secure information here.
+Bosambo, watching his face through half-closed lids, saw the dismal
+droop of the other's mouth, and came to the conclusion that whatever
+might be the cause of the visit, it was not to hold the Ochori or their
+chief to account for known misdeeds.</p>
+
+<p>"O Bosambo," said Bones, in the river dialect, "this is sad news, for I
+desire that you shall tell me certain things for which Sandi would have
+given you salt and rods."</p>
+
+<p>The Chief of the Ochori sat up in his litter and went so far as to put
+one foot to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said he heartily, "the sound of your lovely voice brings me from
+the grave and gives me strength. Ask, O Bonesi, for you are my father
+and my mother; and though I saw and heard nothing, yet in my sickness I
+had wonderful visions and all things were made visible&mdash;that I declare
+to you, Bonesi, before all men."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>"Don't call me 'Bonesi,'" said Bones fiercely. "You're a jolly cheeky
+feller, Bosambo&mdash;you're very, very naughty, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Master," said Bosambo humbly, "though I rule these Ochori I am a
+foreigner in this land; in the tongue of my own people, Bonesi means
+'he-who-is-noble-in-face-and-a-giver-of-justice.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's better," nodded the gratified Bones, and went on speaking in the
+dialect. "You shall help me in this&mdash;it touches the people of the Inner
+N'gombi&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo fell back wearily on to the litter, and rolled his eyes as one
+in pain.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a sorrow for me, Bo&mdash;Tibbetti," he said faintly, "but I am a
+sick man."</p>
+
+<p>"Also," continued Bones, "of a certain box of wood, full of poisons&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>As well as he could Bones explained the peculiar properties of germ
+culture.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ko!" said Bosambo, closing his eyes, and was to all appearances
+beyond human aid.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>"Lord," said Bosambo, at parting, "you have brought me to life, and
+every man of every tribe shall know that you are a great healer. To all
+the far and quiet places of the forest I will send my young men who will
+cry you aloud as a most wonderful doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," murmured Bones modestly, "not at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Master," said Bosambo, this time in English, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>for he was not to be
+outdone in the matter of languages, for had he not attended a great
+mission school in Monrovia? "Master, you dam' fine feller, you look 'um
+better feller, you no find um. You be same like Moses and Judi Escariot,
+big fine feller, by golly&mdash;yas."</p>
+
+<p>All night long, between the visits which Bones had been making from the
+moored <i>Wiggle</i> to the village (feeling the patient's pulse with a
+profound and professional air and prescribing brandy and milk), Bosambo
+had been busy.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand you at the door, Secundi," he said to his headman, "and let one
+of your men go to the shore to warn me of my lord Tibbetti's coming, for
+I have work to do. It seems this Maker of Storms were better with Sandi
+than with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Tibbetti is a fool, I think," suggested Secundi.</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo, kneeling on a rush mat, busy with a native chisel and a pot of
+clay paint, looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"I have beaten older men than you with a stick until they have wept," he
+said, "and all for less than you say. For this is the truth, Secundi,
+that a child cannot be a fool, though an old man may be a shame. This is
+the word of the blessed prophet. As for Tibbetti, he has a clean and
+loving heart."</p>
+
+<p>There was a rustle at the door and a whispered voice.</p>
+
+<p>The box and the tools were thrust under a skin rug and Bosambo again
+became the interesting invalid.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>In the morning Bosambo had said farewell, and a blushing Bones listened
+with unconcealed pleasure to the extravagant praise of his patient.</p>
+
+<p>"And this I tell you, Tibbetti," said Bosambo, standing thigh-deep in
+the river by the launch's side, "that knowing you are wise man who
+gathers wisdom, I have sent to the end of my country for some rare and
+beautiful thing that you may carry it with you."</p>
+
+<p>He signalled to a man on the bank, and his servant brought him a curious
+object.</p>
+
+<p>It was, Bones noted, a square box apparently of native make, for it was
+fantastically carved and painted. There were crude heads and hideous
+forms which never were on land or sea. The paint was brilliant; red,
+yellow and green indiscriminately splashed.</p>
+
+<p>"This is very ancient and was brought to my country by certain forest
+people. It is a Maker of Storms, and is a powerful ju-ju for good and
+evil."</p>
+
+<p>Bones, already a collector of native work, was delighted. His delight
+soothed him for his failure in other respects.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to headquarters empty-handed and sat the centre of a
+chilling group&mdash;if we except Patricia Hamilton&mdash;and endeavoured, as so
+many successful advocates have done, to hide his short-comings behind a
+screen of rhetoric.</p>
+
+<p>He came to the part of his narrative where Bosambo was taken ill without
+creating any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>notable sensation, save that Sanders's grey eyes narrowed
+a little and he paid greater heed to the rest of the story.</p>
+
+<p>"There was poor old Bosambo knocked out, sir&mdash;ab-so-lutely done
+for&mdash;fortunately I did not lose my nerve. You know what I am, dear old
+officer, in moments of crisis?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Hamilton grimly, "something between a Welsh revivalist
+and a dancing dervish."</p>
+
+<p>"Please go on, Bones," begged the girl, not the least interested of the
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>"I dashed straight back to the <i>Wiggle</i>," said Bones breathlessly,
+"searched for my medicine chest&mdash;it wasn't there! Not so much as a
+mustard plaster&mdash;what was I to do, dear old Miss Hamilton?" he appealed
+dramatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell him, Pat," begged Hamilton, "he's sure to guess it."</p>
+
+<p>"What was I to do? I seized a bottle of brandy," said Bones with relish,
+"I dashed back to where Bosambo was lyin'. I dashed into the village,
+into his hut and got a glass&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well!" said Sanders impatiently, "what happened after all this
+dashing?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones spread out his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Bosambo is alive to-day," he said simply, "praisin'&mdash;if I may be
+allowed to boast&mdash;the name of Bones the Medicine Man. Look here, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He dragged towards him along the floor of the hut a package covered with
+a piece of native <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>sacking. This he whisked away and revealed the
+hideous handiwork of an artist who had carved and painted as true to
+nature as a man may who is not quite certain whether the human eye is
+half-way down the nose or merely an appendage to his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"That, sir," said Bones impressively, "is one of the most interestin'
+specimens of native work I have ever seen: a gift! From Bosambo to the
+jolly old doctor man who dragged him, if I might so express it, from the
+very maws of death."</p>
+
+<p>He made his dramatic pause.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders bent down, took a penknife from his pocket and scraped the paint
+from a flat oblong space on the top.</p>
+
+<p>There for all men to see&mdash;save Bones who was now engaged in a relation
+of his further adventure to his one sympathizer&mdash;was a brass plate, and
+when the paint had been scraped away, an inscription&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Department du M&eacute;dicins, Etat <span class="smcap">Congo Belge</span>.</p></div>
+
+<p>Sanders and Hamilton gazed, fascinated and paralysed to silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always had a feelin' I'd like to be a medicine man." Bones
+prattled on. "You see&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, Bones," interrupted Sanders quietly. "Did you open this box
+by any chance?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>"No, sir," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"And did you see any of its contents?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," said Bones confidentially, "that's the most interestin' thing
+about the box. It contains magic&mdash;which, of course, honoured sir and
+Excellency, is all rubbish."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after a few trials
+opened the case and scrutinized the contents, noting the comforting fact
+that all the tubes were sealed. He heaved a deep sigh of thankfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't by chance discover anything about the missing cultures,
+Bones?" he asked mildly.</p>
+
+<p>Bones shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and looked disconsolately
+at his chief.</p>
+
+<p>"You think I've been feeble, but I haven't lost hope, sir," he said,
+with fine resolution. "I've got a feelin' that if I were allowed to go
+into the forest, disguised, sir, as a sort of half-witted native chap,
+sir&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Disguised!" said Hamilton. "Good Lord, what do you want a disguise
+for?"</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>BONES AND THE WIRELESS</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">K</span>o-boru, the headman of Bingini, called his relations together for a
+solemn family conference.</p>
+
+<p>The lower river folk play an inconsiderable r&ocirc;le in the politics of the
+Territories, partly because they are so near to headquarters that there
+is no opportunity for any of those secret preparations which precede all
+native intrigues, great or small, and partly because the lower river
+people are so far removed from the turbulent elements of the upper river
+that they are not swayed by the cyclonic emotions of the Isisi, the cold
+and deliberate desire for slaughter which is characteristically
+Akasavian, or the electrical decisions of the Outer N'gombi.</p>
+
+<p>But they had their crises.</p>
+
+<p>To Bingini came all the notables of the district who claimed kinship
+with Ko-boru, and they sat in a great circle about the headman's hut,
+alternately eyeing the old headman and their stout relative, his
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>"All my relations shall know this," began Ko-boru, after Okmimi, the
+witch-doctor, had formally burnt away the devils and ghosts that fringe
+all large assemblies, "that a great shame has come to us, every one,
+because of Yoka-m'furi. For this Yoka is to Sandi as a brother, and
+guides his little ship up and down the river, and because of this
+splendid position I gave him my own daughter by the first of my wives."</p>
+
+<p>"S'm-m!" murmured the council in agreement.</p>
+
+<p>"Also I built him a hut and gave him a garden, where his wife might
+work, and he has sat at family palavers. Now, I tell you that
+Yoka-m'furi is an evil man, for he has left my daughter, and has found
+another wife in the upper river, and he comes no more to this village,
+and my daughter weeps all day.</p>
+
+<p>"For three seasons he has not been to this village; when the moon comes
+again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the
+flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased
+miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe.</p>
+
+<p>For the man who deliberately separates himself from his wife for four
+seasons and does not spend twenty-four hours&mdash;"from sunrise to moonset"
+in her village is automatically divorced and freed from all
+responsibility. This is the custom of all people from the lands of the
+Great King to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I have had a dream," Ko-boru went on, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>"and in this dream it was
+told me that I should call you all together, and that I and the chief of
+my councillors and friends should go to Sandi and tell him what is
+true."</p>
+
+<p>"Brother and uncle," said Bechimi of G'lara, "I will go with you, for
+once I spoke to Sandi and he spoke to me, and because of his cunning
+memory he will recall Bechimi, who picked up his little black stick,
+when it fell, and gave it to him."</p>
+
+<p>Five were chosen to accompany Ko-boru, and they took canoe and travelled
+for less than five miles to the Residency.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders was entertaining Patricia Hamilton with stories of native feuds,
+when the unexpected deputation squatted in the sun before the verandah.</p>
+
+<p>"O Ko-boru," hailed Sanders, "why do you come?"</p>
+
+<p>Ko-boru was all for a long and impressive palaver, but recognized a
+certain absence of encouragement in the Commissioner's tone. Therefore
+he came straight to the point.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you are our father and our mother, Sandi," he said, in conclusion,
+"and when you speak, all wonders happen. Also you have very beautiful
+friends, Militini, who speak a word and set his terrible soldiers moving
+like leopards towards a kill, and Tibbetti, the young one who is
+innocent and simple. So I say to you, Sandi, that if you speak one word
+to Yoka, he will come back to my daughter, his wife."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>Sanders stood by the rail of the stoep and looked down upon the
+spokesman.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear strange things, Ko-boru," he said quietly. "They tell me stories
+of a woman with many lovers and an evil tongue; and once there came to
+me Yoka with a wounded head, for this daughter of yours is very quick in
+her anger."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the flustered Ko-boru, "such things happen even in love."</p>
+
+<p>"All things happen in love," said Sanders, with a little smile, "and, if
+it is to be, Yoka will return. Also, if it is to be, he will not go back
+to the woman, and she will be free. This palaver is finished."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," pleaded Ko-boru, "the woman will do no more angry things. Let
+him come back from sunrise to moonset&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"This palaver is finished," repeated Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>On their way back to Bingini the relatives of Ko-boru made a plot. It
+was the first plot that had been hatched in the shadow of headquarters
+for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be indiscreet to ask what your visitors wanted?" asked the
+girl, as the crestfallen deputation was crossing the square to their
+canoe.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a marriage palaver," replied Sanders, with a little grimace,
+"and I was being requested to restore a husband to a temperamental lady
+who has a passion for shying cook-pots at her husband when she is
+annoyed."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>The girl's laughing eyes were fixed upon his.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Mr. Sanders!" she said, with mock seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be sorry for me," smiled Sanders. "I'm rather domestic, really,
+and I'm interested in this case because the man concerned is my
+steersman&mdash;the best on the river, and a capital all-round man. Besides
+that," he went on seriously, "I regard them all as children of mine. It
+is right that a man who shirks his individual responsibilities to the
+race should find a family to 'father.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you?" she asked, after a little pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do I what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shirk your responsibilities," she said. "This is a healthy and a
+delightful spot: a woman might be very happy here."</p>
+
+<p>There was an awkward silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I've been awfully impertinent," said Patricia, hurriedly
+rising, "but to a woman there is a note of interrogation behind every
+bachelor&mdash;especially nice bachelors&mdash;and the more 'confirmed' he is, the
+bigger the question mark."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders rose to her.</p>
+
+<p>"One of these days I shall do something rash," he threatened, with that
+shy laugh of his. "Here is your little family coming."</p>
+
+<p>Bones and Hamilton were discussing something heatedly, and justice was
+on the side of Lieutenant Tibbetts, if one could judge by the frequency
+with which he stopped and gesticulated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>"It really is too bad," said the annoyed Hamilton, as he mounted the
+steps to the stoep, followed by Bones, who, to do him justice, did not
+adopt the attitude of a delinquent, but was, on the contrary, injured
+virtue personified.</p>
+
+<p>"What is too bad, dear?" asked the girl sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"A fortnight ago," said Hamilton, "I told this silly ass&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Your jolly old brother is referrin' to me, dear lady," explained Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"Who else could I be referring to?" demanded the other truculently. "I
+told him to have all the company accounts ready by to-morrow. You know,
+sir, that the paymaster is coming down from Administration to check 'em,
+and will you believe me, sir"&mdash;he glared at Bones, who immediately
+closed his eyes resignedly&mdash;"would you believe me that, when I went to
+examine those infernal accounts, they were all at sixes and sevens?"</p>
+
+<p>"Threes an' nines, dear old officer," murmured Bones, waking up, "the
+matter in dispute being a trifle of thirty-nine dollars, which I've
+generously offered to make up out of my own pocket."</p>
+
+<p>He beamed round as one who expected applause.</p>
+
+<p>"And on the top of this," fumed Hamilton, "he talks of taking Pat for an
+early morning picnic to the village island!"</p>
+
+<p>"Accompanied by the jolly old accounts," corrected Bones. "Do me
+justice, sir and brother-officer. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>I offered to take the books with me,
+an' render a lucid and convincin' account of my stewardship."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make me laugh," snarled Hamilton, stamping into the bungalow.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't he naughty?" said Bones admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Bones," warned the girl, "I shan't go unless you keep your word
+with Alec."</p>
+
+<p>Bones drew himself up and saluted.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old friend," he said proudly, "put your faith in Bones."</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>"H.M. Launch No. 36 (Territories)," as it was officially described on
+the stores record, had another name, which she earned in her early days
+through certain eccentricities of construction. Though she might not in
+justice be called the <i>Wiggle</i> any longer, yet the <i>Wiggle</i> she was from
+one end of the river to the other, and even native men called her
+"Komfuru," which means "that which does not run straight."</p>
+
+<p>It had come to be recognized that the <i>Wiggle</i> was the especial charge
+of Lieutenant Tibbetts. Bones himself was the first to recognize this
+right. There were moments when he inferred that the <i>Wiggle's</i> arrival
+on the station at the time he was making his own first appearance was
+something more than a coincidence.</p>
+
+<p>She was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a launch, for she
+possessed a square, open dining saloon and two tiny cabins amidships.
+Her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>internal works were open to the light of day, and her engineer
+lived in the engine-room up to his waist and on deck from his waist up,
+thus demonstrating the possibility of being in two places at once.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Wiggle</i>, moreover, possessed many attributes which are denied to
+other small steamers. She had, for example, a Maxim gun on her tiny
+forecastle. She had a siren of unusual power and diabolical tone, she
+was also fitted with a big motor-horn, both of which appendages were
+Bones's gift to his flagship. The motor-horn may seem superfluous, but
+when the matter is properly explained, you will understand the necessity
+for some less drastic method of self-advertisement than the siren.</p>
+
+<p>The first time the siren had been fitted Bones had taken the <i>Wiggle</i>
+through "the Channel." Here the river narrows and deepens, and the
+current runs at anything from five to seven knots an hour. Bones was
+going up stream, and met the Bolalo Mission steamer coming down. She had
+dipped her flag to the <i>Wiggle's</i> blue ensign, and Bones had replied
+with two terrific blasts on his siren.</p>
+
+<p>After that the <i>Wiggle</i> went backwards, floating with the current all
+ways, from broadside on to stern first, for in those two blasts Bones
+had exhausted the whole of his steam reserve.</p>
+
+<p>She was also equipped with wireless. There was an "aerial" and an
+apparatus which Bones <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>had imported from England at a cost of twelve
+pounds, and which was warranted to receive messages from two hundred
+miles distant. There was also a book of instructions. Bones went to his
+hut with the book and read it. His servant found him in bed the next
+morning, sleeping like a child, with his hand resting lightly upon the
+second page.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders and Hamilton both took a hand at fixing the <i>Wiggle's</i> wireless.
+The only thing they were all quite certain about was that there ought to
+be a wire somewhere. So they stretched the aerial from the funnel to the
+flagstaff at the stern of the boat, and then addressed themselves to the
+less simple solution of "making it work."</p>
+
+<p>They tried it for a week, and gave it up in despair.</p>
+
+<p>"They've had you, Bones," said Hamilton. "It doesn't 'went.' Poor old
+Bones!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your pity, dear old officer, is offensive," said Bones stiffly, "an' I
+don't mind tellin' you that I've a queer feelin'&mdash;I can't explain what
+it is, except that I'm a dooce of a psychic&mdash;that that machine is goin'
+to be jolly useful."</p>
+
+<p>But though Bones worked day and night, read the book of instructions
+from cover to cover, and took the whole apparatus to pieces, examining
+each part under a strong magnifying glass, he never succeeded either in
+transmitting or receiving a message, and the machine was repacked and
+stored in the spare cabin, and was never by any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>chance referred to,
+except by Hamilton in his most unpleasant moments.</p>
+
+<p>Bones took an especial delight in the <i>Wiggle</i>; it was his very own
+ship, and he gave her his best personal attention.</p>
+
+<p>It was Bones who ordered from London especially engraved notepaper
+headed "H. M. S. <i>Komfuru</i>"&mdash;the native name sounded more dignified than
+<i>Wiggle</i>, and more important than "Launch 36." It was Bones who
+installed the little dynamo which&mdash;when it worked&mdash;lit the cabins and
+even supplied power for a miniature searchlight. It was Bones who had
+her painted Service grey, and would have added another funnel if
+Hamilton had not detected the attempted aggrandizement. Bones claimed
+that she was dustproof, waterproof, and torpedo-proof, and Hamilton had
+voiced his regret that she was not also fool-proof.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock the next morning, when the world was all big hot stars
+and shadows, and there was no sound but the whisper of the running river
+and the "ha-a-a-a&mdash;ha-a-a-a" of breakers, Bones came from his hut,
+crossed the parade-ground, and, making his way by the light of a lantern
+along the concrete quay&mdash;it was the width of an average table&mdash;dropped
+on to the deck and kicked the custodian of the <i>Wiggle</i> to wakefulness.</p>
+
+<p>Bones's satellite was one Ali Abid, who was variously described as Moor,
+Egyptian, Tripolitan, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>and Bedouin, but was by all ethnological
+indications a half-breed Kano, who had spent the greater part of his
+life in the service of a professor of bacteriology. This professor was
+something of a purist, and the association with Ali Abid, plus a
+grounding in the elementary subjects which are taught at St. Joseph's
+Mission School, Cape Coast Castle, had given Ali a gravity of demeanour
+and a splendour of vocabulary which many better favoured than he might
+have envied.</p>
+
+<p>"Arise," quoth Bones, in the cracked bass which he employed whenever he
+felt called upon to deliver his inaccurate versions of Oriental poets&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Arise, for morning in the bowl of night</span>
+<span class="i0">Has chucked a stone to put the stars to flight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lo! and lo!... Get up, Ali; the caravan is</span>
+<span class="i4">moving.</span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, make haste!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once
+said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!")</p>
+
+<p>Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold,
+and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones
+had donated.</p>
+
+<p>"Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your
+preliminary instructions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>presupposed that you had made necessary
+arrangements <i>re personnel</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Bones scratched his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I
+was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly
+old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue
+explicit an' particular instructions about grub?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said Ali, "you didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, when enjoying refreshing coma, possess
+delirium, hallucinations, highly imaginative, which dissipate when the
+subject recovers consciousness, but retain in brain cavity illusory
+reminiscences."</p>
+
+<p>Bones thrust his face into the other's.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to tell me I dreamt it?" he hissed.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said Ali, "self-preservation compels complete acquiescence in
+your diagnosis."</p>
+
+<p>"You're childish," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a few vague instructions in the best Bones manner, and stole up
+to the dark Residency. He had solemnly promised Sanders that he would
+rouse the girl without waking up the rest of the house.</p>
+
+<p>They were to go up stream to the Village Island, where the ironworkers
+of the Akasava had many curious implements to show her. Breakfast was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>to be taken on the boat, and they were to return for tiffin.</p>
+
+<p>Overnight she had shown Bones the window of her room, and Hamilton had
+offered to make a chalk mark on the sash, so there could be no mistaking
+the situation of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"If you wake me before sunrise, I shall do something I shall be sorry
+for," he warned Bones. "If you return without straightening the
+accounts, I shall do something which <i>you</i> will be sorry for."</p>
+
+<p>Bones remembered this as he crept stealthily along the wooden verandah.
+To make doubly sure, he took off his boots and dropped them with a
+crash.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh!" said Bones loudly. "Sh, Bones! Not so much noise, you silly old
+ass!"</p>
+
+<p>He crept softly along the wooden wall and reconnoitred. The middle
+window was Hamilton's room, the left was Sanders's, the right was
+Patricia's. He went carefully to the right window and knocked. There was
+no answer. He knocked again. Still no reply. He knocked loudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Bones?" growled Sanders's voice.</p>
+
+<p>Bones gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Awfully sorry, sir," he whispered agitatedly&mdash;"my mistake entirely."</p>
+
+<p>He tiptoed to the left window and rapped smartly. Then he whistled, then
+he rapped again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>He heard a bed creak, and turned his head modestly away.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Bones, dear old sister," he said, in his loudest whisper. "Arise,
+for mornin' in the bowl of light has&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton's voice raged at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it was you, you blithering&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old officer," began Bones, "awfully sorry! Go to sleep again.
+Night-night!"</p>
+
+<p>"Go to the devil!" said a muffled voice.</p>
+
+<p>Bones, however, went to the middle window; here he could make no
+mistake. He knocked authoritatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up, ma'am," he said; "time is on the wing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The sash was flung up, and again Bones confronted the furious Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said the exasperated Bones, "how the dooce did you get here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know this room has two windows? I told you last night, you
+goop! Pat sleeps at the other end of the building. I told you that, too,
+but you've got a brain like wool!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am obliged to you, sir," said Bones, on his dignity, "for the
+information. I will not detain you."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton groped on his dressing-table for a hair-brush.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back to bed, sir," said Bones, "an' don't forget to say your
+prayers."</p>
+
+<p>He was searching for the window in the other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>wing of the Residency,
+when the girl, who had been up and dressed for a quarter of an hour,
+came softly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Wow!" screeched Bones. "Oh, Lord, dear old sister, you gave me the
+dickens of a fright! Well, let's get along. Thank heavens, we haven't
+disturbed anybody."</p>
+
+<p>He was followed to the boat with the imprecations of two pyjamaed
+figures that stood on the stoep and watched his lank body melt in the
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Send us a wireless when you're coming back!" roared Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Cad!" said Bones, between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Ali Abid had not been idle. He had aroused Yoka, the steersman, and
+Boosoobi, the engineer, and these two men had accepted the unexpected
+call with the curious readiness which natives show on such occasions,
+and which suggests that they have pre-knowledge of the summons, and are
+only waiting the word.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the small cabins Ali had arranged the much-discussed company
+accounts ready for his lord's attention, and there was every promise of
+a happy and a profitable day when Yoka rang the engines "ahead," and the
+<i>Wiggle</i> jerked her way to midstream.</p>
+
+<p>The east had grown pale, there was a murmur from the dark forests on
+either bank, the timorous chirping or bad-tempered squawk of a bird, a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>faint fragrance of burning gumwood from the fishing villages
+established on the river bank, where, in dancing spots of light, the
+women were tending their fires.</p>
+
+<p>There is no intermediate stage on the big river between darkness and
+broad daylight. The stars go out all at once, and the inky sky which
+serves then becomes a delicate blue. The shadows melt deeper and deeper
+into the forest, clearly revealing the outlines of the straight-stemmed
+trees. There is just this interregnum of pearl greyness, a sort of
+hush-light, which lasts whilst a man counts twenty, before the silver
+lances of the sun are flashing through the leaves, and the grey veil
+which blurs the islands to shapeless blotches in a river of dull silver
+is burnt to nothingness, and the islands are living things of vivid
+green set in waters of gold.</p>
+
+<p>"The sunrise!" said Bones, and waved his hand to the east with the air
+of one who was responsible for the miracle.</p>
+
+<p>The girl sat in a deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the
+freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat,
+a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The
+sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, a rainbow
+in flight.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that wonderful?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Bones peered up at the birds, shading his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Just like a jolly old patchwork quilt," he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>said. "What a pity they
+can't talk till you teach 'em! They're awful bad eatin', too, though
+some fellers say they make a good curry&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look, look!"</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Wiggle</i> was swerving to the southern bank of the river, and two
+majestic flamingos standing at the water's edge had arrested the girl's
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>They're</i> bad eatin', too," said the informative Bones. "The flesh is
+fishy an' too fat; heron are just the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you a soul, Bones?" she asked severely.</p>
+
+<p>"A soul, dear ma'am?" Bones asked, in astonishment. "Why, that's my
+specialty!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a delightful morning for the girl, for Bones had retired to his
+cabin at her earnest request, and was struggling with the company
+accounts, and she was left to enjoy the splendour of the day, to watch
+the iron-red waters piling up against the <i>Wiggle's</i> bows, to feel the
+cool breezes that swept down from the far-away mountains, and all this
+without being under the necessity of making conversation with Bones.</p>
+
+<p>That gentleman had a no less profitable morning, for Ali Abid was a
+methodical and clerkly man, and unearthed the missing thirty-nine
+dollars in the Compensation Record.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank goodness!" said Bones, relieved. "You're a jolly old accountant,
+Ali. I'd never have found it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision
+of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack of concentration."</p>
+
+<p>"Have it your way," said Bones, "but get the statement out for me to
+copy."</p>
+
+<p>He awoke the girl from a profound reverie&mdash;which centred about shy and
+solemn bachelors who adopted whole nations of murderous children as
+their own&mdash;and proceeded to "take charge."</p>
+
+<p>This implied the noisy issuing of orders which nobody carried out, the
+manipulation of a telescope, anxious glances at the heavens, deep and
+penetrating scrutinies of the water, and a promenade back and forward
+from one side of the launch to the other. Bones called this "pacing the
+bridge," and invariably carried his telescope tucked under his arm in
+the process, and, as he had to step over Pat's feet every time, and
+sometimes didn't, she arrested his nautical wanderings.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me dizzy," she said. "And isn't that the island?"</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>In the early hours of the afternoon they re-embarked, the <i>capita</i> of
+the village coming to the beach to see them off.</p>
+
+<p>They brought back with them a collection of spear-heads, gruesome
+execution knives, elephant swords, and wonder-working steel figures.</p>
+
+<p>"And the lunch was simply lovely, Bones," agreed the girl, as the
+<i>Wiggle</i> turned her nose <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>homeward. "Really, you can be quite clever
+sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones, "you saw me to-day as I really am.
+The mask was off, and the real Bones, kindly, thoughtful, considerate,
+an'&mdash;if I may use the word without your foundin' any great hope upon
+it&mdash;tender. You saw me free from carkin' care, alert&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go along and finish your accounts, like a good boy," she said. "I'm
+going to doze."</p>
+
+<p>Doze she did, for it was a warm, dozy afternoon, and the boat was
+running swiftly and smoothly with the tide. Bones yawned and wrote,
+copying Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept
+contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his
+post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful&mdash;Yoka, whose hands
+turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river
+ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes
+its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow passages
+between. At this season only one such passage&mdash;the centre of all&mdash;is
+safe. This is known as "The Passage of the Tree," because all boats,
+even the <i>Zaire</i>, must pass so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a
+great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the
+current is never strong here, for the passage is a shallow one. Yoka
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>felt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer
+to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose
+dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more
+than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging
+between bough and water.</p>
+
+<p>"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset
+is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his
+head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his
+thought was accompanied by strange guttural noises.</p>
+
+<p>Patricia Hamilton was also thinking, but much more gracefully. Boosoobi
+sat by his furnace door, nodding. Sometimes he looked at the steam
+gauge, sometimes he kicked open the furnace door and chucked in a few
+billets of wood, but, in the main, he was listening to the soothing
+"chook-a-chook, chook-a-chook" of his well-oiled engines.</p>
+
+<p>"Woo-yow!" yawned Bones, stretched himself, and came blinking into the
+sunlight. The sun was nearly setting.</p>
+
+<p>"What the dooce&mdash;&mdash;" said Bones. He stared round.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Wiggle</i> had run out from the mouth of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>river and was at sea.
+There was no sign of land of any description. The low-lying shores of
+the territory had long since gone under the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Bones laid his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping girl, and she woke
+with a start.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old shipmate," he said, and his voice trembled, "we're alone on
+this jolly old ocean! Lost the steersman!"</p>
+
+<p>She realized the seriousness of the situation in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>The dozing engineer, now wide awake, came aft at Bones's call, and
+accepted the disappearance of the steersman without astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to go back," said Bones, as he swung the wheel round. "I
+don't think I'm wrong in sayin' that the east is opposite to the west,
+an', if that's true, we ought to be home in time for dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Sar," said Boosoobi, who, being a coast boy, elected to speak English,
+"dem wood she no lib."</p>
+
+<p>"Hey?" gasped Bones, turning pale.</p>
+
+<p>"Dem wood she be done. I look um. I see um. I no find um."</p>
+
+<p>Bones sat down heavily on the rail.</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?" Pat asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"He says there's no more wood," said Bones. "The horrid old bunkers are
+empty, an' we're at the mercy of the tempest."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bones!" she cried, in consternation.</p>
+
+<p>But Bones had recovered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>"What about swimmin' to shore with a line?" he said. "It can't be more
+than ten miles!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Ali Abid who prevented the drastic step.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," he said, "the subject on such occasions should act with
+deliberate reserve. Proximity of land presupposes research. The subject
+should assist rather than retard research by passivity of action, easy
+respiration, and general normality of temperature."</p>
+
+<p>"Which means, dear old Miss Hamilton, that you've got to keep your wool
+on," explained Bones.</p>
+
+<p>What might have happened is not to be recorded, for at that precise
+moment the s.s. <i>Paretta</i> came barging up over the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>There was still steam in the <i>Wiggle's</i> little boiler, and one log of
+wood to keep it at pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Bones was incoherent, but again Ali came to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," he said, "for intimating SOS-ness there is upon steamer or launch
+certain scientific apparatus, unadjusted, but susceptible to treatment."</p>
+
+<p>"The wireless!" spluttered Bones. "Good lor', the wireless!"</p>
+
+<p>Twenty minutes later the <i>Wiggle</i> ran alongside the gangway of the s.s.
+<i>Paretta</i>, anticipating the arrival of the <i>Zaire</i> by half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>The s.s. <i>Paretta</i> was at anchor when Sanders brought the <i>Zaire</i> to the
+scene.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>He saw the <i>Wiggle</i> riding serenely by the side of the great ship,
+looking for all the world like a humming bird under the wings of an
+ostrich, and uttered a little prayer of thankfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"They're safe," he said to Hamilton. "O Yoka, take the <i>Zaire</i> to the
+other side of the big boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Master, do we go back to-night to seek Ko-boru?" asked Yoka, who was
+bearing marks which indicated his strenuous experience, for he had
+fought his way clear of his captors, and had swum with the stream to
+headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow is also a day," quoth Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton was first on the deck of the s.s. <i>Paretta</i>, and found his
+sister and a debonair and complacent Bones waiting for him. With them
+was an officer whom Hamilton recognized.</p>
+
+<p>"Company accounts all correct, sir," said Bones, "audited by the jolly
+old paymaster"&mdash;he saluted the other officer&mdash;"an' found correct, sir,
+thus anticipatin' all your morose an' savage criticisms."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton gripped his hand and grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones was really wonderful," said the girl, "they wouldn't have seen us
+if it hadn't been for his idea."</p>
+
+<p>"Saved by wireless, sir," said Bones nonchalantly. "It was a mere
+nothin'&mdash;just a flash of inspiration."</p>
+
+<p>"You got the wireless to work?" asked Hamilton incredulously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>"No, sir," said Bones. "But I wanted a little extra steam to get up to
+the ship, so I burnt the dashed thing. I knew it would come in handy
+sooner or later."</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE REMEDY</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">B</span>eyond
+the far hills, which no man of the Ochori passed, was a range of
+blue mountains, and behind this again was the L'Mandi country. This
+adventurous hunting men of the Ochori had seen, standing in a safe place
+on the edge of the Great King's country. Also N'gombi people, who are
+notoriously disrespectful of all ghosts save their own, had, upon a
+time, penetrated the northern forest to a high knoll which Nature had
+shaped to the resemblance of a hayrick.</p>
+
+<p>A huntsman climbing this after his lawful quarry might gain a nearer
+view of the blue mountains, all streaked with silver at certain periods
+of the year, when a hundred streams came leaping with feathery feet from
+crag to crag to strengthen the forces of the upper river, or, as some
+said, to create through underground channels the big lakes M'soobo and
+T'sambi at the back of the N'gombi country.</p>
+
+<p>And on summer nights, when the big yellow moon came up and showed all
+things in her own <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>chaste way, you might see from the knoll of the
+hayrick these silver ribbons all a-glitter, though the bulk of the
+mountain was lost to sight.</p>
+
+<p>The river folk saw little of the L'Mandi, because L'Mandi territory lies
+behind the country of the Great King, who looked with a jealous eye upon
+comings and goings in his land, and severely restricted the movement and
+the communications of his own people.</p>
+
+<p>The Great King followed his uncle in the government of the pleasant
+O'Mongo lands, and he had certain advantages and privileges, the
+significance of which he very imperfectly interpreted.</p>
+
+<p>His uncle had died suddenly at the hands of Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
+C.M.G., and the land itself might have passed to the protection of the
+Crown, for there was gold in the country in large and payable
+quantities.</p>
+
+<p>That such a movement was arrested was due largely to the L'Mandi and the
+influence they were able to exercise upon the European Powers by virtue
+of their military qualities. Downing Street was all for a permanent
+occupation of the chief city and the institution of a conventional
+<i>r&eacute;gime</i>; but the L'Mandi snarled, clicked their heels, and made
+jingling noises with their great swords, and there was at that moment a
+Government in office in England which was rather impressed by
+heel-clicking and sword-jingling, and so the territory of the Great King
+was left <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>intact, and was marked on all maps as Omongoland, and coloured
+red, as being within the sphere of British influence. On the other hand,
+the L'Mandi people had it tinted yellow, and described it as an integral
+portion of the German Colonial Empire.</p>
+
+<p>There was little communication between L'Mandi and Sanders's territory,
+but that little was more than enough for the Commissioner, since it took
+the shape of evangelical incursions carried out by missionaries who were
+in the happy position of not being obliged to say as much as "By your
+leave," since they had secured from a Government which was, as I say,
+impressed by heel-clicking and sword-jingling, an impressive document,
+charging "all commissioners, sub-commissioners, magistrates, and
+officers commanding our native forces," to give facilities to these good
+Christian gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>There were missionaries in the Territories who looked askance at their
+brethren, and Ferguson, of the River Mission, made a journey to
+headquarters to lay his views upon the subject before the Commissioner.</p>
+
+<p>"These fellows aren't missionaries at all, Mr. Sanders; they are just
+political agents utilizing sacred symbols to further a political
+propaganda."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a Government palaver," smiled Sanders, and that was all the
+satisfaction Ferguson received. Nevertheless, Sanders was watchful, for
+there were times when the L'Mandi missioners <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>and their friends strayed
+outside their sphere.</p>
+
+<p>Once the L'Mandi folk had landed in a village in the middle Ochori, had
+flogged the headman, and made themselves free of the commodities which
+the people of the village had put aside for the payment of their
+taxation.</p>
+
+<p>In his wrath, Bosambo, the chief, had taken ten war canoes; but Sanders,
+who had been in the Akasava on a shooting trip, was there before him,
+and had meted out swift justice to the evil-doers.</p>
+
+<p>"And let me tell you, Bosambo," said Sanders severely, "that you shall
+not bring spears except at my word."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Bosambo, frankness itself, "if I disobeyed you, it was
+because I was too hot to think."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"That I know," he said. "Now I tell you this, Bosambo, and this is the
+way of very wise men&mdash;that when they go to do evil things with a hot
+heart, they first sleep, and in their sleep their spirits go free and
+talk with the wise and the dead, and when they wake, their hearts are
+cool, and they see all the folly of the night, and their eyes are bright
+for their own faults."</p>
+
+<p>"Master," said Bosambo, "you are my father and my mother, and all the
+people of the river you carry in your arms. Now I say to you that when I
+go to do an evil thing I will first sleep, and I will make all my people
+sleep also."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>There are strange stories in circulation as to the manner in which
+Bosambo carried out this novel reform. There is the story of an Ochori
+wife-beater who, adjured by his chief, retired to slumber on his
+grievance, and came to his master the following morning with the
+information that he had not closed his eyes. Whereupon Bosambo clubbed
+him insensible, in order that Sanders's plan might have a fair chance.</p>
+
+<p>At least, this is the story which Hamilton retailed at breakfast one
+morning. Sanders, appealed to for confirmation, admitted cautiously that
+he had heard the legend, but did not trouble to make an investigation.</p>
+
+<p>"The art of governing a native country," he said, "is the art of not
+asking questions."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose you want to know something?" demanded Patricia.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Sanders, with a twinkle in his eyes, "you must pretend that
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"What is there to do to-day?" asked Hamilton, rolling his serviette.</p>
+
+<p>He addressed himself to Lieutenant Tibbetts, who, to Sanders's intense
+annoyance, invariably made elaborate notes of all the Commissioner said.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin' until this afternoon, sir," said Bones, closing his notebook
+briskly, "then we're doin' a little deep-sea fishin'."</p>
+
+<p>The girl made a grimace.</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't catch anything yesterday, Bones," she objected.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>"We used the wrong kind of worm," said Bones confidently. "I've found a
+new worm nest in the plantation. Jolly little fellers they are, too."</p>
+
+<p>"What are we doing to-day, Bones?" repeated Hamilton ominously.</p>
+
+<p>Bones puckered his brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Deep-sea fishin', dear old officer and comrade," he repeated, "an'
+after dinner a little game of tiddly-winks&mdash;Bones <i>v.</i> jolly old
+Hamilton's sister, for the championship of the River an' the Sanders
+Cup."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton breathed deeply, but was patient.</p>
+
+<p>"Your King and your country," he said, "pay you seven and eightpence per
+diem&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Bones, a light dawning, "you mean <i>work</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Strange, is it not," mused Hamilton, "that we should consider&mdash;&mdash;Hullo!"</p>
+
+<p>They followed the direction of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A white bird was circling groggily above the plantation, as though
+uncertain where to alight. There was weariness in the beat of its wings,
+in the irregularity of its flight. Bones leapt over the rail of the
+verandah and ran towards the square. He slowed down as he came to a
+place beneath the bird, and whistled softly.</p>
+
+<p>Bones's whistle was a thing of remarkable sweetness&mdash;it was his one
+accomplishment, according to Hamilton, and had neither tune nor rhyme.
+It was a succession of trills, rising and falling, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>presently, after
+two hesitating swoops, the bird rested on his outstretched hand. He came
+back to the verandah and handed the pigeon to Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>The Commissioner lifted the bird and with gentle fingers removed the
+slip of thin paper fastened to its leg by a rubber band.</p>
+
+<p>Before he opened the paper he handed the weary little servant of the
+Government to an orderly.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, this is Sombubo," said Abiboo, and he lifted the pigeon to his
+cheek, "and he comes from the Ochori."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders had recognized the bird, for Sombubo was the swiftest, the
+wisest, and the strongest of all his messengers, and was never
+dispatched except on the most critical occasions.</p>
+
+<p>He smoothed the paper and read the letter, which was in Arabic.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"From the servant of God Bosambo, in the Ochori City, to Sandi,
+where-the-sea-runs.</p>
+
+<p>"There have come three white men from the L'Mandi country, and they
+have crossed the mountains. They sit with the Akasava in full
+palaver. They say there shall be no more taxes for the People of
+the River, but there shall come a new king greater than any. And
+every man shall have goats and salt and free hunting. They say the
+Akasava shall be given all the Ochori country, also guns like the
+white man. Many guns and a thousand carriers are in the mountains
+waiting to come. I hold the Ochori with all my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>spears. Also the
+Isisi chief calls his young men for your King.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace be on your house in the name of Allah Compassionate and
+Merciful."</p></div>
+
+<p>"M-m!" said Sanders, as he folded the paper. "I'm afraid there will be
+no fishing this afternoon. Bones, take the <i>Wiggle</i> and get up to the
+Akasava as fast as you can; I will follow on the <i>Zaire</i>. Abiboo!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will find me a swift Ochori pigeon. Hamilton, scribble a line to
+Bosambo, and say that he shall meet Bones by Sokala's village."</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later Bones was sending incomprehensible semaphore signals
+of farewell as the <i>Wiggle</i> slipped round the bend of the river.</p>
+
+<p>Sokala, a little chief of the Isisi, was a rich man. He had ten wives,
+each of whom lived in her own hut. Also each wife wore about her neck a
+great ring of brass weighing twenty pounds, to testify to the greatness
+and wealth of her lord.</p>
+
+<p>Sokala was wizened and lined of face, and across his forehead were many
+deep furrows, and it seemed that he lived in a state of perplexity as to
+what should become of all his riches when he died, for he was cursed
+with ten daughters&mdash;O'femi, Jubasami, K'sola, M'kema, Wasonga, Mombari,
+et cetera.</p>
+
+<p>When Wasonga was fourteen, there was revealed to Sokala, her father, a
+great wonder.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>The vision came at the tail end of a year of illness, when his head had
+ached for weeks together, and not even the brass wire twisted lightly
+about his skull brought him relief.</p>
+
+<p>Sokala was lying on his fine bed of skins, wondering why strange animals
+sat by the fire in the centre of his hut, and why they showed their
+teeth and talked in human language. Sometimes they were leopards,
+sometimes they were little white-whiskered monkeys that scratched and
+told one another stories, and these monkeys were the wisest of all, for
+they discussed matters which were of urgency to the sick man rolling
+restlessly from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>On this great night two such animals had appeared suddenly, a big grey
+fellow with a solemn face, and a very little one, and they sat staring
+into the fire, mechanically seeking their fleas until the little one
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Sokala is very rich and has ten daughters."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said the other; "also he will die because he has no
+son."</p>
+
+<p>Sokala's heart beat furiously with fear, but he listened when the little
+black monkey spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"If Sokala took Wasonga, his daughter, into the forest near to The Tree
+and slew her, his daughters would become sons and he would grow well."</p>
+
+<p>And the other monkey nodded.</p>
+
+<p>As they talked, Sokala recognized the truth of all that they had said.
+He wondered that he had never thought of the matter before in this way.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>All night long he lay thinking&mdash;thinking&mdash;long after the fires had died
+down to a full red glow amidst white ashes, and the monkeys had
+vanished. In the cold dawn his people found him sitting on the side of
+the bed, and marvelled that he should have lived the night through.</p>
+
+<p>"Send me Wasonga, my daughter," he said, and they brought a sleepy girl
+of fourteen, tall, straight, and wholly reluctant. "We go a journey,"
+said Sokala, and took from beneath his bed his wicker shield and his
+sharp-edged throwing-spear.</p>
+
+<p>"Sokala hunts," said the people of the village significantly, and they
+knew that the end was very near, for he had been a great hunter, and men
+turn in death to the familiar pursuits of life.</p>
+
+<p>Three miles on the forest road to the Isisi city, Sokala bade his
+daughter sit on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Bones had met and was in earnest conversation with the Chief of the
+Ochori, the <i>Wiggle</i> being tied up at a wooding, when he heard a scream,
+and saw a girl racing through the wood towards him.</p>
+
+<p>Behind her, with the foolish stare on his face which comes to men in the
+last stages of sleeping sickness, his spear balanced, came Sokala.</p>
+
+<p>The girl tumbled in a wailing, choking heap at Bones's feet, and her
+pursuer checked at the sight of the white man.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you, Sokala,"<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> said Bones gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the old man, blinking at the officer of the Houssas, "you
+shall see a wonderful magic when I slay this woman, for my daughters
+shall be sons, and I shall be a well man."</p>
+
+<p>Bones took the spear from his unresisting hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I will show you a greater magic, Sokala, for I will give you a little
+white stone which will melt like salt in your mouth, and you shall
+sleep."</p>
+
+<p>The old man peered from Lieutenant Tibbetts to the King of the Ochori.
+He watched Bones as he opened his medicine chest and shook out two
+little white pellets from a bottle marked "Veronal," and accepted them
+gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless my life," cried Bones, "don't chew 'em, you dear old
+silly&mdash;swallow 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Sokala soberly, "they have a beautiful and a magic taste."</p>
+
+<p>Bones sent the frightened girl back to the village, and made the old man
+sit by a tree.</p>
+
+<p>"O Tibbetti," said Bosambo, in admiration, "that was a good palaver. For
+it is better than the letting of blood, and no one will know that Sokala
+did not die in his time."</p>
+
+<p>Bones looked at him in horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness gracious heavens, Bosambo," he gasped, "you don't think I've
+poisoned him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Master," said Bosambo, nodding his head, "he die one time&mdash;he not fit
+for lib&mdash;you give um plenty no-good stuff. You be fine Christian feller
+same like me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>Bones wiped the perspiration from his brow and explained the action of
+veronal. Bosambo was sceptical. Even when Sokala fell into a profound
+slumber, Bosambo waited expectantly for his death. And when he realized
+that Bones had spoken the truth, he was a most amazed man.</p>
+
+<p>"Master," he said, in that fluid Ochori dialect which seems to be made
+up of vowels, "this is a great magic. Now I see very surely that you
+hold wonderful ju-jus, and I have wronged you, for I thought you were
+without wisdom."</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer-oh!" said the gratified Bones.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>Near by the city of the Akasava is a small hill on which no vegetation
+grows, though it rises from a veritable jungle of undergrowth. The
+Akasava call this place the Hill of the Women, because it was here that
+M'lama, the King of the Akasava, slew a hundred Akasava maidens to
+propitiate M'shimba M'shamba, the god of storms. It was on the topmost
+point of the hill that Sanders erected a fine gallows and hung M'lama
+for his country's good. It had always been associated with the spiritual
+history of the Akasava, for ghosts and devils and strange ju-jus had
+their home hereabouts, and every great decision at which the people
+arrived was made upon its slopes. At the crest there was a palaver
+house&mdash;no more than a straw-thatched canopy affording shelter for four
+men at the most.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>On a certain afternoon all the chiefs, great and minor, the headmen, the
+warriors, and the leaders of fishing villages of the Akasava, squatted
+in a semicircle and listened to the oration of a bearded man, who spoke
+easily in the river dialect of the happy days which were coming to the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>By his side were two other white men&mdash;a tall, clean-shaven man with
+spectacles, and a stouter man with a bristling white moustache.</p>
+
+<p>Had the bearded man's address been in plain English, or even plain
+German, and had it been delivered to European hearers accustomed to
+taking its religion in allegories and symbols, it would have been
+harmless. As it was, the illustrations and the imagery which the speaker
+employed had no other interpretation to the simple-minded Akasava than a
+purely material one.</p>
+
+<p>"I speak for the Great King," said the orator, throwing out his arms, "a
+king who is more splendid than any. He has fierce and mighty armies that
+cover the land like ants. He holds thunder and lightning in his hand,
+and is greater than M'shimba M'shamba. He is the friend of the black man
+and the white, and will deliver you from all oppression. He will give
+you peace and full crops, and make you <i>capita</i> over your enemies. When
+he speaks, all other kings tremble. He is a great buffalo, and the
+pawing of his hoofs shakes the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"This he says to you, the warrior people of the Akasava&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>The message was destined to be undelivered.</p>
+
+<p>Heads began to turn, and there was a whisper of words. Some of the
+audience half rose, some on the outskirts of the gathering stole quietly
+away&mdash;the lesser chiefs were amongst these&mdash;and others, sitting stolidly
+on, assumed a blandness and a scepticism of demeanour calculated to meet
+the needs of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>For Sanders was at the foot of the hill, a trim figure in white, his
+solar helmet pushed back to cover the nape of his neck from the slanting
+rays of the sun, and behind Sanders were two white officers and a
+company of Houssas with fixed bayonets. Not a word said Sanders, but
+slowly mounted the Hill of the Dead. He reached the palaver house and
+turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Let no man go," he said, observing the disposition of the gathering to
+melt away, "for this is a great palaver, and I come to speak for these
+God-men."</p>
+
+<p>The bearded orator glared at the Commissioner and half turned to his
+companions. The stout man with the moustache said something quickly, but
+Sanders silenced him with a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"O people," said Sanders, "you all know that under my King men may live
+in peace, and death comes quickly to those who make war. Also you may
+worship in what manner you desire, though it be my God or the famous
+gods of your fathers. And such as preach of God or gods have full
+liberty. Who denies this?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>"Lord, you speak the truth," said an eager headman.</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore," said Sanders, "my King has given these God-men a book<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>
+that they may speak to you, and they have spoken. Of a great king they
+tell. Also of wonders which will come to you if you obey him. But this
+king is the same king of whom the God-cross men and the water-God men
+tell. For he lives beyond the stars, and his name is God. Tell me,
+preacher, if this is the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>The bearded man swallowed something and muttered, "This is true."</p>
+
+<p>"Also, there is no king in this world greater than my King, whom you
+serve," Sanders continued, "and it is your duty to be obedient to him,
+and his name is D'jorja." Sanders raised his hand to his helmet in
+salute. "This also the God-men will tell you."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the three evangelists.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Professor Wiessmann hesitated for the fraction of a second. The
+pause was pardonable, for he saw the undoing of three months' good work,
+and his thoughts at that moment were with a certain party of carriers
+who waited in the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>"The question of earthly and heavenly dominion is always debatable," he
+began in English, but Sanders stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"We will speak in the Akasava tongue," he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>said, "and let all men hear.
+Tell me, shall my people serve my King, or shall they serve another?"</p>
+
+<p>"They shall serve your King," growled the man, "for it is the law."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Sanders in English.</p>
+
+<p>The gathering slowly dispersed, leaving only the white men on the hill
+and a few lingering folk at the foot, watching the stolid native
+soldiery with an apprehension born of experience.</p>
+
+<p>"We should like you to dine with us," said Sanders pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>The leader of the L'Mandi mission hesitated, but the thin man with the
+spectacles, who had been silent, answered for him.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be pleased, Mr. Commissioner," he said. "After eating with
+these swine for a month, a good dinner would be very acceptable."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders said nothing, though he winced at the inelegant description of
+his people, and the three evangelists went back to their huts, which had
+been built for their use by the Akasava chief.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later that worthy sent for a certain witch-doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Go secretly," he said, "and call all headmen and chiefs to the Breaking
+Tree in the forest. There they shall be until the moon comes up, and the
+L'Mandi lords will come and speak freely. And you shall tell them that
+the word he spoke before Sandi was no true word, but to-night he shall
+speak the truth, and when Sandi is gone we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>shall have wonderful guns
+and destroy all who oppose us."</p>
+
+<p>This the witch-doctor did, and came back by the river path.</p>
+
+<p>Here, by all accounts, he met Bosambo, and would have passed on; but the
+Chief of the Ochori, being in a curious mind and being, moreover,
+suspicious, was impressed by the importance of the messenger, and made
+inquiries....</p>
+
+<p>An old man is a great lover of life, and after the witch-doctor's head
+had been twice held under water&mdash;for the river was providentially
+near&mdash;he gasped the truth.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>The three missioners were very grateful guests indeed. They were the
+more grateful because Patricia Hamilton was an unexpected hostess. They
+clicked their heels and kissed her hand and drank her health many times
+in good hock. The dinner was a feast worthy of Lucullus, they swore, the
+wine was perfect, and the coffee&mdash;which Abiboo handed round with a
+solemn face&mdash;was wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>They sat chatting for a time, and then the bearded man looked at his
+watch.</p>
+
+<p>"To bed, gentlemen," he said gaily. "We leave you, Herr Commissioner, in
+good friendship, we trust?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, most excellent," said Sanders awkwardly, for he was a poor liar,
+and knew that his spies <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>were waiting on the bank to "pick up" these
+potential enemies of his.</p>
+
+<p>He watched them go ashore and disappear into the darkness of the forest
+path that leads to the village.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was rising over the tall trees, and an expectant gathering of
+Akasava notables were waiting for a white spokesman who came not, when
+Bosambo and his bodyguard were engaged in lifting three unconscious men
+and laying them in a large canoe. He himself paddled the long boat to
+midstream, where two currents run swiftly, one to the sea and one to the
+Isisi River, which winds for a hundred miles until it joins the Congo.</p>
+
+<p>"Go with God," said Bosambo piously, as he stepped into his own canoe,
+and released his hold of the other with its slumbering freight, "for if
+your king is so great, he will bring you to your own lands; and if he is
+not great, then you are liars. O Abiboo"&mdash;he spoke over his shoulder to
+the sergeant of Houssas&mdash;"tell me, how many of the magic white stones of
+Bonesi did you put in their drink?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bosambo, I put four in each, as you told me, and if my lord Tibbetti
+misses them, what shall I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall say," said Bosambo, "that this is Sandi's own word&mdash;that when
+men plan evils they must first sleep. And I think these men will sleep
+for a long time. Perhaps they will sleep for ever&mdash;all things are with
+God."</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MEDICINE MAN</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span>t
+the flood season, before the turbulent tributaries of the Isisi River
+had been induced to return to their accustomed channels, Sanders came
+back to headquarters a very weary man, for he had spent a horrid week in
+an endeavour&mdash;successful, but none the less nerve-racking&mdash;to impress an
+indolent people that the swamping of their villages was less a matter of
+Providence and ghosts than the neglect of elementary precaution.</p>
+
+<p>"For I told you, Ranabini," said an exasperated Sanders, "that you
+should keep the upper channel free from trees and branches, and I have
+paid you many bags of salt for your services."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, it is so," said Ranabini, scratching his brown leg thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"At the full of the moon, before the rains, did I not ask you if the
+channel was clear, and did you not say it was like the street of your
+village?" demanded Sanders, in wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Ranabini frankly, "I lied to you, thinking your lordship
+was mad. For what other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>man would foresee with his wonderful eye that
+rains would come? Therefore, lord, I did not think of the upper channel,
+and many trees floated down and made a little dam. Lord, I am an
+ignorant man, and my mind is full of my own brother, who has come from a
+long distance to see me, for he is a very sick man."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders's mind was occupied by no thought of Ranabini's sick brother, as
+the dazzling white <i>Zaire</i> went thrashing her way down stream. For he
+himself was a tired man, and needed rest, and there was a dose of
+malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as
+though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and
+these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each
+lightning flicker a momentary unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Hamilton met him on the quay, and when Sanders landed&mdash;walking a
+thought unsteadily, and instantly began a long and disjointed account of
+his adventures on a Norwegian salmon river&mdash;Hamilton took him by the arm
+and led the way to the bungalow.</p>
+
+<p>In ten minutes he was assisting Sanders into his pyjamas, Sanders
+protesting, albeit feebly, and when, after forcing an astonishing amount
+of quinine and arsenic down his chief's throat, Hamilton came from the
+semi-darkness of the bungalow to the white glare of the barrack square,
+Hamilton was thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>"Let one of your women watch by the bed of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>the lord Sandi," said he to
+Sergeant Abiboo, of the Houssas, "and she shall call me if he grows
+worse."</p>
+
+<p>"On my life," said Abiboo, and was going off.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Tibbetti?" asked Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant turned back and seemed embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," he said, "Tibbetti has gone with the lady, your sister, to make
+a palaver with Jimbujini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava. They sit in
+the forest in a magic circle, and lo! Tibbetti grows very wise."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton swore under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his
+second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the
+drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from the coast.</p>
+
+<p>"Go tell the lord Tibbetti to come to me," he said, "but first send your
+woman to Sandi."</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Tibbetts, with his plain, boyish face all red with his
+exertions, yet dignified withal, came hurriedly from his studies.</p>
+
+<p>"Come aboard, sir," he said, and saluted extravagantly, blinking at his
+superior with a curious solemnity of mien which was his own peculiar
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones," said Hamilton, "where the dickens have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones drew a long breath. He hesitated, then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Knowledge," he said shortly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>Hamilton looked at his subordinate in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Dash it, you aren't off your head, too, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones shook his head with vigour.</p>
+
+<p>"Knowledge of the occult, sir and brother-officer," he said. "One is
+never too old to learn, sir, in this jolly old world."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right," said Hamilton; "in fact, I'm pretty certain that you'll
+never live long enough to learn everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, who had had less qualms than Bones when the summons arrived,
+and had, in consequence, returned more leisurely, came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Pat," said her brother, "Sanders is down with fever."</p>
+
+<p>"Fever!" she said a little breathlessly. "It isn't&mdash;dangerous?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones, smiling indulgently, soothed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin' catchin', dear Miss Patricia Hamilton," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't be stupid," she said so fiercely that Bones recoiled. "Do
+you think I'm afraid of catching anything? Is it dangerous for Mr.
+Sanders?" she asked her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"No more dangerous than a cold in the head," he answered flippantly. "My
+dear child, we all have fever. You'll have it, too, if you go out at
+sunset without your mosquito boots."</p>
+
+<p>He explained, with the easy indifference of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>man inured to malaria,
+the habits of the mosquito&mdash;his predilection for ankles and wrists,
+where the big veins and arteries are nearer to the surface&mdash;but the girl
+was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so
+alarmed Hamilton that she abandoned it.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a
+trivet in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast
+his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand
+shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought
+Patricia Hamilton, and said so.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit
+for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is
+simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you
+remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply
+delirious&mdash;ravin'&mdash;off my head."</p>
+
+<p>"So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we
+didn't think you were ill."</p>
+
+<p>"If you'd seen me," Bones went on, solemnly shaking one skinny
+forefinger at the girl, "you'd have said: 'Bones is for the High Jump.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I should have said nothing so vulgar, Bones," she retorted. "And was it
+malaria?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Hamilton triumphantly, "I was too much of a gentleman to hint
+that it wasn't. Press the question, Pat."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>Bones shrugged his shoulders and cast a look of withering contempt upon
+his superior.</p>
+
+<p>"In the execution of one's duty, dear Miss Patricia H," he said, "the
+calibre of the gun that lays a fellow low, an' plunges his relations an'
+creditors into mournin', is beside the point. The only consideration, as
+dear old Omar says, is&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'The movin' finger hits, an', havin' hit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moves on, tum tumty tumty tay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all a feller does won't make the slightest difference.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Is that Omar or Shakespeare?" asked the dazed Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet, dear. What was the illness, Bones?"</p>
+
+<p>"Measles," said Hamilton brutally, "and German measles at that."</p>
+
+<p>"Viciously put, dear old officer, but, nevertheless, true," said Bones
+buoyantly. "But when the hut's finished, I'll return good for evil.
+There's goin' to be a revolution, Miss Patricia Hamilton. No more fever,
+no more measles&mdash;health, wealth, an' wisdom, by gad!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sunstroke," diagnosed Hamilton. "Pull yourself together, Bones&mdash;you're
+amongst friends."</p>
+
+<p>But Bones was superior to sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>There was a creature of Lieutenant Tibbetts a solemn, brown man, who
+possessed, in addition to a vocabulary borrowed from a departed
+professor of bacteriology, a rough working knowledge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>of the classics.
+This man's name was, as I have already explained, Abid Ali or Ali Abid,
+and in him Bones discovered a treasure beyond price.</p>
+
+<p>Bones had recently built himself a large square hut near the
+seashore&mdash;that is to say, he had, with the expenditure of a great amount
+of midnight oil, a pair of compasses, a box of paints, and a &#8868;-square,
+evolved a somewhat complicated plan whereon certain blue oblongs stood
+for windows, and certain red cones indicated doors. To this he had added
+an elevation in the severe Georgian style.</p>
+
+<p>With his plan beautifully drawn to scale, with sectional diagrams and
+side elevations embellishing its margin, he had summoned Mojeri of the
+Lower Isisi, famous throughout the land as a builder of great houses,
+and to him he had entrusted the execution of his design.</p>
+
+<p>"This you shall build for me, Mojeri," said Bones, sucking the end of
+his pencil and gazing lovingly at the plan outspread before him, "and
+you shall be famous all through the world. This room shall be twice as
+large as that, and you shall cunningly contrive a passage so that I may
+move from one to the other, and none see me come or go. Also, this shall
+be my sleeping-place, and this a great room where I will practise
+powerful magics."</p>
+
+<p>Mojeri took the plan in his hand and looked at it. He turned it upside
+down and looked at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>it that way. Then he looked at it sideways.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said he, putting down the plan with a reverent hand, "all these
+wonders I shall remember."</p>
+
+<p>"And did he?" asked Hamilton, when Bones described the interview.</p>
+
+<p>Bones blinked and swallowed.</p>
+
+<p>"He went away and built me a square hut&mdash;just a plain square hut. Mojeri
+is an ass, sir&mdash;a jolly old fraud an' humbug, sir. He&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see the plan," said Hamilton, and his subordinate produced the
+cartridge paper.</p>
+
+<p>"H'm!" said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny. "Very pretty. But how
+did you get into your room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Through the door, dear old officer," said the sarcastic Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it might be through the roof," said Hamilton, "or possibly
+you made one of your famous dramatic entries through a star-trap in the
+floor&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Who is it speaks in those sepulchral tones?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is the demon king&mdash;the grisly Bones!<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Bing!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"and up you pop amidst red fire and smoke."</p>
+
+<p>A light dawned on Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to tell me, jolly old Ham, that I forgot to put a door into
+my room?" he asked incredulously, and peered over his chief's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>"That is what I mean, Bones. And where does the passage lead to?"</p>
+
+<p>"That goes straight from my sleepin' room to the room marked L," said
+Bones, in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>were</i> going to be a demon king," said the admiring Hamilton.
+"But fortunately for you, Bones, the descent to L is not so easy&mdash;you've
+drawn a party wall across&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"L stands for laboratory," explained the architect hurriedly. "An'
+where's the wall? God bless my jolly old soul, so I have! Anyway, that
+could have been rectified in a jiffy."</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking largely," said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny of the plan,
+"I think Mojeri has acted wisely. You will have to be content with the
+one room. What was the general idea of the house, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"Science an' general illumination of the human mind," said Bones
+comprehensively.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Hamilton. "You were going to make fireworks. A splendid
+idea, Bones."</p>
+
+<p>"Painful as it is to undeceive you, dear old sir," said Bones, with
+admirable patience, "I must tell you that I'm takin' up my medical
+studies where I left off. Recently I've been wastin' my time, sir:
+precious hours an' minutes have been passed in frivolous
+amusement&mdash;<i>tempus fugit</i>, sir an' captain, <i>festina lente</i>, an' I might
+add&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," begged Hamilton; "you give me a headache."</p>
+
+<p>There was a look of interest in Bones's eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>"If I may be allowed to prescribe, sir&mdash;&mdash;" he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, I'd rather have the headache," replied Hamilton hastily.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly a week before the laboratory was fitted that Bones gave a
+house-warming, which took the shape of an afternoon tea. Bones, arrayed
+in a long white coat, wearing a ferocious lint mask attached to huge
+mica goggles, through which he glared on the world, met the party at the
+door and bade them a muffled welcome. They found the interior of the hut
+a somewhat uncomfortable place. The glass retorts, test tubes, bottles,
+and the paraphernalia of science which Bones had imported crowded the
+big table, the shelves, and even overflowed on to the three available
+chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome to my little workroom," said the hollow voice of Bones from
+behind the mask. "Wel&mdash;&mdash;Don't put your foot in the crucible, dear old
+officer! You're sittin' on the methylated spirits, ma'am! Phew!"</p>
+
+<p>Bones removed his mask and showed a hot, red face.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take it off, Bones," begged Hamilton; "it improves you."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders was examining the microscope, which stood under a big glass
+shade.</p>
+
+<p>"You're very complete, Bones," he said approvingly. "In what branch of
+science are you dabbling?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>"Tropical diseases, sir," said Bones promptly, and lifted the shade.
+"I'm hopin' you'll allow me to have a look at your blood after tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Sanders. "You had better practise on Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't come near me!" threatened Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>It was Patricia who, when the tea-things had been removed, played the
+heroine.</p>
+
+<p>"Take mine," she said, and extended her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Bones found a needle, and sterilized it in the flame of a spirit lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"This won't hurt you," he quavered, and brought the point near the
+white, firm flesh. Then he drew it back again.</p>
+
+<p>"This won't hurt you, dear old miss," he croaked, and repeated the
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>He stood up and wiped his streaming brow.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the heart to do it," he said dismally.</p>
+
+<p>"A pretty fine doctor you are, Bones!" she scoffed, and took the needle
+from his hand. "There!"</p>
+
+<p>Bones put the tiny crimson speck between his slides, blobbed a drop of
+oil on top, and focussed the microscope.</p>
+
+<p>He looked for a long time, then turned a scared face to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Sleepin' sickness, poor dear old Miss Hamilton!" he gasped. "You're
+simply full of tryps! Good Lord! What a blessin' for you I discovered
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders pushed the young scientist aside and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>looked. When he turned his
+head, the girl saw his face was white and drawn, and for a moment a
+sense of panic overcame her.</p>
+
+<p>"You silly ass," growled the Commissioner, "they aren't trypnosomes! You
+haven't cleaned the infernal eyepiece!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not trypnosomes?" said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem disappointed, Bones," said Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"As a man, I'm overjoyed," replied Bones gloomily; "as a scientist, it's
+a set-back, dear old officer&mdash;a distinct set-back."</p>
+
+<p>The house-warming lasted a much shorter time than the host had intended.
+This was largely due to the failure of a very beautiful experiment which
+he had projected. In order that the rare and wonderful result at which
+he aimed should be achieved, Bones had the hut artificially darkened,
+and they sat in a hot and sticky blackness, whilst he knocked over
+bottles and swore softly at the instruments his groping hand could not
+discover. And the end of the experiment was a large, bad smell.</p>
+
+<p>"The women and children first," said Hamilton, and dived for the door.</p>
+
+<p>They took farewell of Bones at a respectful distance.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton went across to the Houssa lines, and Sanders walked back to the
+Residency with the girl. For a little while they spoke of Bones and his
+newest craze, and then suddenly the girl asked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>"You didn't really think there were any of those funny things in my
+blood, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders looked straight ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought&mdash;you see, we know&mdash;the tryp is a distinct little body, and
+anybody who had lived in this part of the world for a time can pick him
+out. Bones, of course, knows nothing thoroughly&mdash;I should have
+remembered that."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing until they reached the verandah, and she turned to go
+to her room.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't nice, was it?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a taste of hell," he said simply. And she fetched a quick, long
+sigh and patted his arm before she realized what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>Bones, returning from his hut, met Sanders hurrying across the square.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones, I want you to go up to the Isisi," said the Commissioner.
+"There's an outbreak of some weird disease, probably due to the damming
+of the little river by Ranabini, and the flooding of the low forests."</p>
+
+<p>Bones brightened up.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir an' Excellency," he said gratefully, "comin' from you, this tribute
+to my scientific&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be an ass, Bones!" said Sanders irritably. "Your job is to make
+these beggars work. They'll simply sit and die unless you start them on
+drainage work. Cut a few ditches with a fall to the river; kick Ranabini
+for me; take up a few kilos of quinine and dose them."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>Nevertheless, Bones managed to smuggle on board quite a respectable
+amount of scientific apparatus, and came in good heart to the despondent
+folk of the Lower Isisi.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks after Bones had taken his departure, Sanders was sitting at
+dinner in a very thoughtful mood.</p>
+
+<p>Patricia had made several ineffectual attempts to draw him into a
+conversation, and had been answered in monosyllables. At first she had
+been piqued and a little angry, but, as the meal progressed, she
+realized that matters of more than ordinary seriousness were occupying
+his thoughts, and wisely changed her attitude of mind. A chance
+reference to Bones, however, succeeded where more pointed attempts had
+failed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Sanders, in answer to the question she had put, "Bones has
+some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for
+two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his
+forte."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you sometimes feel the need of a doctor here?" she asked, and
+Sanders smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"There is very little necessity. The military doctor comes down
+occasionally from headquarters, and we have a native apothecary. We have
+few epidemics amongst the natives, and those the medical missions deal
+with&mdash;sleep-sickness, beri-beri and the like. Sometimes, of course, we
+have a pretty bad outbreak which spreads&mdash;&mdash;Don't go, Hamilton&mdash;I want
+to see you for a minute."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>Hamilton had risen, and was making for his room, with a little nod to
+his sister.</p>
+
+<p>At Sanders's word he turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Walk with me for a few minutes," said Sanders, and, with an apology to
+the girl, he followed the other from the room.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders was perturbed&mdash;this he knew, and his own move towards his room
+was in the nature of a challenge for information.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones," said the Commissioner shortly. "Do you realize that we have had
+no news from him since he left?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"He's an erratic beggar, but nothing could have happened to him, or we
+should have heard about it."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders did not reply at once. He paced up and down the gravelled path
+before the Residency, his hands behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"No news has come from Ranabini's village for the simple reason that
+nobody has entered or left it since Bones arrived," he said. "It is
+situated, as you know, on a tongue of land at the confluence of two
+rivers. No boat has left the beaches, and an attempt to reach it by land
+has been prevented by force."</p>
+
+<p>"By force?" repeated the startled Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I had the report in this morning. Two men of the Isisi from another
+village went to call on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>some relations. They were greeted with arrows,
+and returned hurriedly. The headman of M'gomo village met with the same
+reception. This came to the ears of my chief spy Ahmet, who attempted to
+paddle to the island in his canoe. At a distance of two hundred yards he
+was fired upon."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they've got Bones?" gasped Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, Bones nearly got Ahmet, for Bones was the marksman."</p>
+
+<p>The two men paced the path in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Either Bones has gone mad," said Hamilton, "or&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Or&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton laughed helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't fathom the mystery," he said. "McMasters will be down
+to-morrow, to look at some sick men. We'll take him up, and examine the
+boy."</p>
+
+<p>It was a subdued little party that boarded the <i>Zaire</i> the following
+morning, and Patricia Hamilton, who came to see them off, watched their
+departure with a sense of impending trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. McMasters alone was cheerful, for this excursion represented a break
+in a somewhat monotonous routine.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be the sun," he suggested. "I have known several fellows who
+have gone a little nutty from that cause. I remember a man at Grand
+Bassam who shot&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shut up, Mac, you grisly devil!" snapped Hamilton. "Talk about
+butterflies."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>The <i>Zaire</i> swung round the bend of the river that hid Ranabini's
+village from view, but had scarcely come into sight when&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ping!"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders saw the bullet strike the river ahead of the boat, and send a
+spiral column of water shooting into the air. He put up his glasses and
+focussed them on the village beach.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!" he said grimly. "Take her in, Abiboo."</p>
+
+<p>As the steersman spun the wheel&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ping!"</p>
+
+<p>This time the shot fell to the right.</p>
+
+<p>The three white men looked at one another.</p>
+
+<p>"Let every man take cover," said Sanders quietly. "We're going to that
+beach even if Bones has a battery of 75's!"</p>
+
+<p>An exclamation from Hamilton arrested him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's signalling," said the Houssa Captain, and Sanders put up his
+glasses again.</p>
+
+<p>Bones's long arms were waving at ungainly angles as he semaphored his
+warning.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton opened his notebook and jotted down the message&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Awfully sorry, dear old officer," he spelt, and grinned at the
+unnecessary exertion of this fine preliminary flourish, "but must keep
+you away. Bad outbreak of virulent smallpox&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders whistled, and pulled back the handle of the engine-room
+telegraph to "stop."</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" said Hamilton through his teeth, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>for he had seen such an
+outbreak once, and knew something of its horrors. Whole districts had
+been devastated in a night. One tribe had been wiped out, and the
+rotting frames of their houses still showed amidst the tangle of
+elephant grass which had grown up through the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>He wiped his forehead and read the message a little unsteadily, for his
+mind was on his sister&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Had devil of fight, and lost twenty men, but got it under. Come
+and get me in three weeks. Had to stay here for fear careless
+devils spreading disease."</p></div>
+
+<p>Sanders looked at Hamilton, and McMasters chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"This is where I get a swift vacation," he said, and called his servant.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton leapt on to the rail, and steadying himself against a
+stanchion, waved a reply&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We are sending you a doctor."</p>
+
+<p>Back came the reply in agitated sweeps of arm&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor be blowed! What am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I say, sir?" asked Hamilton after he had delivered the
+message.</p>
+
+<p>"Just say 'a hero,'" said Sanders huskily.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>BONES, KING-MAKER</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">P</span>atricia
+Hamilton, an observant young lady, had not failed to notice
+that every day, at a certain hour, Bones disappeared from view. It was
+not for a long time that she sought an explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Bones?" she asked one morning, when the absence of her
+cavalier was unusually protracted.</p>
+
+<p>"With his baby," said her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't be comic, dear. Where is Bones? I thought I saw him with
+the ship's doctor."</p>
+
+<p>The mail had come in that morning, and the captain and surgeon of the
+s.s. <i>Boma Queen</i> had been their guests at breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton looked up from his book and removed his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to tell me that Bones has kept his guilty secret all this
+time?" he asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down by his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Please tell me the joke. This isn't the first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>time you have ragged
+Bones about 'the baby'; even Mr. Sanders has done it."</p>
+
+<p>She looked across at the Commissioner with a reproving shake of her
+pretty head.</p>
+
+<p>"Have <i>I</i> ragged Bones?" asked Sanders, in surprise. "I never thought I
+was capable of ragging anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is, Pat," said her brother, "there isn't any rag about the
+matter. Bones adopted a piccanin."</p>
+
+<p>"A child?"</p>
+
+<p>"A baby about a month old. Its mother died, and some old bird of a
+witch-doctor was 'chopping' it when Bones appeared on the scene."</p>
+
+<p>Patricia gave a little gurgle of delight and clapped her hands. "Oh,
+please tell me everything about it."</p>
+
+<p>"It was Sanders who told her of Henry Hamilton Bones, his dire peril and
+his rescue; it was Hamilton who embellished the story of how Bones had
+given his adopted son his first bath.</p>
+
+<p>"Just dropped him into a tub and stirred him round with a mop."</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this Bones came blithely up from the beach and across the
+parade-ground, his large pipe in his mouth, his cane awhirl.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton watched him from the verandah of the Residency, and called over
+his shoulder to Patricia.</p>
+
+<p>It had been an anxious morning for Bones, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>and even Hamilton was
+compelled to confess to himself that he had felt the strain, though he
+had not mentioned the fact to his sister.</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the roadstead the intermediate Elder Dempster boat was
+waiting the return of the doctor. Bones had been to see him off. An
+important day, indeed, for Henry Hamilton Bones had been vaccinated.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it 'took,'" said Bones gravely, answering the other's question.
+"I must say Henry behaved like a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"What did Fitz say?"</p>
+
+<p>(Fitzgerald, the doctor, had come in accordance with his promise to
+perform the operation.)</p>
+
+<p>"Fitz?" said Bones, and his voice trembled. "Fitz is a cad!"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"He said that babies didn't feel pain, and there was Henry howling his
+young head off. It was horrible!"</p>
+
+<p>Bones wiped his streaming brow with a large and violent bandana, and
+looked round cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word, Ham, to her!" he said, in a loud whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry!" said Hamilton, picking up his pipe. "Her knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gad!" said Bones, in despair, and turned to meet the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bones!" she said reproachfully, "you never told me!"</p>
+
+<p>Bones shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>dropped his pipe,
+blinked, spread out his hands in deprecation, and picked up his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>From which it may be gathered that he was agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said tremulously, "I should be a horrid
+bounder if I denied Henry Hamilton Bones&mdash;poor little chap. If I never
+mentioned him, dear old sister, it is because&mdash;&mdash;Ah, well, you will
+never understand."</p>
+
+<p>He hunched his shoulders dejectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be an ass, Bones. Why the dickens are you making a mystery of the
+thing?" asked Hamilton. "I'll certify you're a jolly good father to the
+brat."</p>
+
+<p>"Not 'brat,' dear old sir," begged Bones. "Henry is a human being with a
+human heart. That boy"&mdash;he wagged his finger solemnly&mdash;"knows me the
+moment I go into the hut. To see him sit up an' say 'Da!' dear old
+sister Hamilton," he went on incoherently, "to see him open his mouth
+with a smile, one tooth through, an' one you can feel with your little
+finger&mdash;why, it's&mdash;it's wonderful, jolly old Miss Hamilton! Damn it,
+it's wonderful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!" cried the shocked girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help it, madame," said Bones miserably. "Fitz cut his poor
+little, fat little arm. Oh, Fitz is a low cad! Cut it, my dear old
+Patricia, mercilessly&mdash;yes, mercilessly, brutally, an' the precious
+little blighter didn't so much as call for the police. Good gad, it was
+terrible!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>His eyes were moist, and he blew his nose with great vigour.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it was awful," she soothed him. "May I come and see him?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones raised a warning hand, and, though the habitat of the wonderful
+child could not have been less than half a mile away, lowered his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"He's asleep&mdash;fitfully, but asleep. I've told them to call me if he has
+a turn for the worse, an' I'm goin' down with a gramophone after dinner,
+in case the old fellow wants buckin' up. But now he's asleep, thankin'
+you for your great kindness an' sympathy, dear old miss, in the moment
+of singular trial."</p>
+
+<p>He took her hand and shook it heartily, tried to say something, and
+swallowed hard, then, turning, walked from the verandah in the direction
+of his hut.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What a boy!" she said, half to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones is very nice," he said, and she looked at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"That is almost eloquent," she said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was rather bald," he replied. "You see, few people really
+understand Bones. I thought, the first time I saw him, that he was a
+fool. I was wrong. Then I thought he was effeminate. I was wrong again,
+for he has played <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>the man whenever he was called upon to do so. Bones
+is one of those rare creatures&mdash;a man with all the moral equipment of a
+good woman."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were fixed on his, and for a moment they held. Then hers
+dropped quickly, and she flushed ever so slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you have defined the perfect man," she said, turning the leaves
+of her book.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning she was admitted to an audience with that paragon of
+paragons, Henry Hamilton Bones.</p>
+
+<p>He lived in the largest of the Houssa huts at the far end of the lines,
+and had for attendants two native women, for whom Bones had framed the
+most stringent and regimental of orders.</p>
+
+<p>The girl paused in the porch of the hut to read the typewritten
+regulations which were fastened by drawing-pins to a green baize board.</p>
+
+<p>They were bi-lingual, being in English and in coast Arabic, in which
+dialect Bones was something of a master. The girl wondered why they
+should be in English.</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely necessary, dear old lady friend," explained Bones firmly.
+"You've no idea what a lot of anxiety I have had. Your dear old
+brother&mdash;God bless him!&mdash;is a topping old sport, but with children you
+can't be too careful, and Ham is awfully thoughtless. There, I've said
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>The English part of the regulations was brief, and she read it through.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Henry Hamilton Bones</span> (Care of).</p>
+
+<p>1. Visitors are requested to make as little noise as possible. How
+would you like to be awakened from refreshing sleep! Be unselfish,
+and put yourself in his place.</p>
+
+<p>2. It is absolutely forbidden to feed the child except with
+articles a list of which may be obtained on application. Nuts and
+chocolates are strictly forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>3. The undersigned will not be responsible for articles broken by
+the child, such as watches. If watches are used to amuse child,
+they should be held by child's ear, when an interested expression
+will be observed on child's face. On no account should child be
+allowed&mdash;knowing no better&mdash;to bite watch, owing to danger from
+glass, minute hand, etc.</p>
+
+<p>4. In lifting child, grasp above waist under arms and raise slowly,
+taking care that head does not fall back. Bring child close to
+holder's body, passing left arm under child and right arm over.
+Child should not be encouraged to sit up&mdash;though quite able to,
+being very forward for eight months&mdash;owing to strain on back. On no
+account should child be thrown up in the air and caught.</p>
+
+<p>5. Any further information can be obtained at Hut 7.</p>
+
+<p class="right3">(Signed)</p>
+
+<p class="right2"><span class="smcap">Augustus Tibbetts</span>, Lieutenant.
+</p></div>
+
+<p>"All based upon my personal observation and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>experience," said Bones
+triumphantly&mdash;"not a single tip from anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are really marvellous, Bones," said the girl, and meant it.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Hamilton Bones sat upright in a wooden cot. A fat-faced atom of
+brown humanity, bald-headed and big-eyed, he sucked his thumb and stared
+at the visitor, and from the visitor to Bones.</p>
+
+<p>Bones he regarded with an intelligent interest which dissolved into a
+fat chuckle of sheer delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it&mdash;isn't it simply extraordinary?" demanded Bones ecstatically.
+"In all your long an' painful experience, dear old friend an' co-worker,
+have you ever seen anything like it? When you remember that babies don't
+open their eyes until three weeks after they're born&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Da!" said Henry Hamilton Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"Da yourself, Henry!" squawked his foster-father.</p>
+
+<p>"Do da!" said Henry.</p>
+
+<p>The smile vanished from Bones's face, and he bit his lip thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Do da!" he repeated. "Let me see, what is 'do da'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do da!" roared Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said gently, "I don't know whether Henry
+wants a drink or whether he has a pain in his stomach, but I think that
+we had better leave him in more experienced hands."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>He nodded fiercely to the native woman nurse and made his exit.</p>
+
+<p>Outside they heard Henry's lusty yell, and Bones put his hand to his ear
+and listened with a strained expression on his face.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the tension passed.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>was</i> a drink," said Bones. "Excuse me whilst I make a note." He
+pulled out his pocket-book and wrote: "'Do da' means 'child wants
+drink.'"</p>
+
+<p>He walked back to the Residency with her, giving her a remarkable
+insight into Henry's vocabulary. It appeared that babies have a language
+of their own, which Bones boasted that he had almost mastered.</p>
+
+<p>She lay awake for a very long time that night, thinking of Bones, his
+simplicity and his lovableness. She thought, too, of Sanders, grave,
+aloof, and a little shy, and wondered....</p>
+
+<p>She woke with a start, to hear the voice of Bones outside the window.
+She felt sure that something had happened to Henry. Then she heard
+Sanders and her brother speaking, and realized that it was not Henry
+they were discussing.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at her watch&mdash;it was three o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"I was foolish to trust that fellow," Sanders was saying, "and I know
+that Bosambo is not to blame, because he has always given a very wide
+berth to the Kulumbini people, though they live on his border."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>She heard him speak in a strange tongue to some unknown fourth, and
+guessed that a spy of the Government had come in during the night.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll get away as quickly as we can, Bones," Sanders said. "We can take
+our chance with the lower river in the dark; it will be daylight before
+we reach the bad shoals. You need not come, Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think Bones will be able to do all you want?" Hamilton's tone
+was dubious.</p>
+
+<p>"Pull yourself together, dear old officer," said Bones, raising his
+voice to an insubordinate pitch.</p>
+
+<p>She heard the men move from the verandah, and fell asleep again,
+wondering who was the man they spoke of and what mischief he had been
+brewing.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>On a little tributary stream, which is hidden by the island of bats, was
+the village of Kulumbini. High elephant grass hid the poor huts even
+from they who navigate a cautious way along the centre of the narrow
+stream. On the shelving beach one battered old canoe of ironwood, with
+its sides broken and rusted, the indolence of its proprietor made plain
+by the badly spliced panels, was all that told the stranger that the
+habitations of man were nigh.</p>
+
+<p>Kulumbini was a term of reproach along the great river and amongst the
+people of the Akasava, the Isisi, and the N'gombi, no less than among
+that most tolerant of tribes the Ochori. They <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>were savage people,
+immensely brave, terrible in battle, but more terrible after.</p>
+
+<p>Kulumbini, the village and city of the tribe, was no more than an
+outlier of a fairly important tribe which occupied forest land
+stretching back to the Ochori boundary. Their territory knew no frontier
+save the frontiers of caprice and desire. They had neither nationality
+nor national ambition, and would sell their spears for a bunch of fish,
+as the saying goes. Their one consuming passion and one great wish was
+that they should not be overlooked, and, so long as the tribes respected
+this eccentricity, the Kulumbini distressed no man.</p>
+
+<p>How this desire for isolation arose, none know. It is certain that once
+upon a time they possessed a king who so shared their views that he
+never came amongst them, but lived in a forest place which is called to
+this day S'furi-S'foosi, "The trees (or glade) of the distant king."
+They had demurred at Government inspection, and Sanders, coming up the
+little river on the first of his visits, was greeted by a shower of
+arrows, and his landing opposed by locked shields.</p>
+
+<p>There are many ways of disposing of opposition, not the least important
+of which is to be found in two big brass-barrelled guns which have their
+abiding place at each end of the <i>Zaire's</i> bridge. There is also a
+method known as peaceful suasion. Sanders had compromised by going
+ashore for a peace palaver with a revolver in each hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>He had a whole fund of Bomongo stories, most of which are unfit for
+printing, but which, nevertheless, find favour amongst the primitive
+humorists of the Great River. By parable and story, by nonsense tale and
+romance, by drawing upon his imagination to supply himself with facts,
+by invoking ju-jus, ghosts, devils, and all the armoury of native
+superstition, he had, in those far-off times, prevailed upon the people
+of Kulumbini not only to allow him a peaceful entrance to their country,
+but&mdash;wonder of wonders!&mdash;to contribute, when the moon and tide were in
+certain relative positions, which in English means once every six
+months, a certain tithe or tax, which might consist of rubber, ivory,
+fish, or manioc, according to the circumstances of the people.</p>
+
+<p>More than this, he stamped a solemn treaty&mdash;he wrote it in a tattered
+laundry-book which had come into the chief's possession by some
+mysterious means&mdash;and he hung about the neck of Gulabala, the titular
+lord of these strange people, the medal and chain of chieftainship.</p>
+
+<p>Not to be outdone in courtesy, the chief offered him the choice of all
+the maidens of Kulumbini, and Sanders, to whom such offers were by no
+means novel, had got out of a delicate situation in his usual manner,
+having resort to witchcraft for the purpose. For he said, with due
+solemnity and hushed breath, that it had been predicted by a celebrated
+witch-doctor of the lower river that the next wife he should take to
+himself would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>die of the sickness-mongo, and said Sanders&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My heart is too tender for your people, O Chief, to lead one of your
+beautiful daughters to death."</p>
+
+<p>"O Sandi," replied Gulabala hopefully, "I have many daughters, and I
+should not miss one. And would it not be good service for a woman of my
+house to die in your hut?"</p>
+
+<p>"We see things differently, you and I," said Sanders, "for, according to
+my religion, if any woman dies from witchcraft, her ghost sits for ever
+at the foot of my bed, making terrifying faces."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Sanders had made his escape, and had received at odd intervals the
+tribute of these remote people.</p>
+
+<p>For years they had dwelt without interference, for they were an unlucky
+people to quarrel with, and, save for one or two trespasses on the part
+of Gulabala, there was no complaint made concerning them. It is not
+natural, however, for native people to prosper, as these folks did,
+without there growing up a desire to kill somebody. For does not the
+river saying run: "The last measure of a full granary is a measure of
+blood"?</p>
+
+<p>In the dead of a night Gulabala took three hundred spears across the
+frontier to the Ochori village of Netcka, and returned at dawned with
+the spears all streaky. And he brought back with him some twenty women,
+who would have sung the death-song of their men but for the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>fact that
+Gulabala and his warriors beat them.</p>
+
+<p>Gulabala slept all the day, he and his spears, and woke to a grisly
+vision of consequence.</p>
+
+<p>He called his people together and spoke in this wise&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Soon Sandi and his headmen will come, and, if we are here, there will
+be many folk hanged, for Sandi is a cruel man. Therefore let us go to a
+far place in the forest, carrying our treasure, and when Sandi has
+forgiven us, we will come back."</p>
+
+<p>A good plan but for the sad fact that Bosambo of the Ochori was less
+than fifty miles away at the dawn of that fatal day, and was marching
+swiftly to avenge his losses, for not only had Gulabala taken women, but
+he had taken sixty goats, and that was unpardonable.</p>
+
+<p>The scouts which Gulabala had sent out came back with the news that the
+way to sanctuary was barred by Bosambo.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of all the men that the Kulumbini hated, they hated none more than
+the Chief of the Ochori. For he alone never scrupled to overlook them,
+and to dare their anger by flogging such of them as raided his territory
+in search of game.</p>
+
+<p>"Ko," said Gulabala, deeply concerned, "this Bosambo is Sandi's dog. Let
+us go back to our village and say we have been hunting, for Bosambo will
+not cross into our lands for fear of Sandi's anger."</p>
+
+<p>They reached the village, and were preparing to remove the last evidence
+of their crime&mdash;one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>goat looks very much like another, but women can
+speak&mdash;when Sanders came striding down the village street, and Gulabala,
+with his curved execution knife in his hand, stood up by the side of the
+woman he had slain.</p>
+
+<p>"O Gulabala," said Sanders softly, "this is an evil thing."</p>
+
+<p>The chief looked left and right helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," he said huskily, "Bosambo and his people put me to shame, for
+they spied on me and overlooked me. And we are proud people, who must
+not be overlooked&mdash;thus it has been for all time."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders pursed his lips and stared at the man.</p>
+
+<p>"I see here a fine high tree," he said, "so high that he who hangs from
+its top branch may say that no man overlooks him. There you shall hang,
+Gulabala, for your proud men to see, before they also go to work for my
+King, with chains upon their legs as long as they live."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Gulabala philosophically, "I have lived."</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later he went the swift way which bad chiefs go, and his
+people were unresentful spectators.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the tenth time I have had to find a new chief in this belt,"
+said Sanders, pacing the deck of the <i>Zaire</i>, "and who on earth I am to
+put in his place I do not know."</p>
+
+<p>The <i>lokalis</i> of the Kulumbini were already calling headmen to grand
+palaver. In the shade of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>the reed-thatched <i>lokali</i> house, before the
+hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of
+ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and
+falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble.</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo came&mdash;by the river route&mdash;as Sanders was leaving the <i>Zaire</i> to
+attend the momentous council.</p>
+
+<p>"How say you, Bosambo&mdash;what man of the Kulumbini folk will hold these
+people in check?"</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo squatted at his lord's feet and set his spear a-spinning.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," he confessed, "I know of none, for they are a strange and
+hateful people. Whatever king you set above them they will despise. Also
+they worship no gods or ghosts, nor have they ju-ju or fetish. And, if a
+man does not believe, how may you believe him? Lord, this I say to
+you&mdash;set me above the Kulumbini, and I will change their hearts."</p>
+
+<p>But Sanders shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"That may not be, Bosambo," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The palaver was a long and weary one. There were twelve good claimants
+for the vacant stool of office, and behind the twelve there were kinsmen
+and spears.</p>
+
+<p>From sunset to nigh on sunrise they debated the matter, and Sanders sat
+patiently through it all, awake and alert. Whether this might be said of
+Bones is questionable. Bones swears that he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>did not sleep, and spent
+the night, chin in hand, turning over the problem in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain he was awake when Sanders gave his summing up.</p>
+
+<p>"People of this land," said Sanders, "four fires have been burnt since
+we met, and I have listened to all your words. Now, you know how good it
+is that there should be one you call chief. Yet, if I take you,
+M'loomo"&mdash;he turned to one sullen claimant&mdash;"there will be war. And if I
+take B'songi, there will be killing. And I have come to this mind&mdash;that
+I will appoint a king over you who shall not dwell with you nor overlook
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred pairs of eyes watched the Commissioner's face. He saw the
+gleam of satisfaction which came at this concession to the traditional
+characteristic of the tribe, and went on, almost completely sure of his
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"He shall dwell far away, and you, the twelve kinsmen of Gulabala, shall
+reign in his place&mdash;one at every noon shall sit in the chief's chair and
+keep the land for your king, who shall dwell with me."</p>
+
+<p>One of the prospective regents rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, that is good talk, for so did Sakalaba, the great king of our
+race, live apart from us at S'furi-S'foosi, and were we not prosperous
+in those days? Now tell us what man you will set over us."</p>
+
+<p>For one moment Sanders was nonplussed. He was rapidly reviewing the
+qualifications of all the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>little chiefs, the headmen, and the fisher
+leaders who sat under him, and none fulfilled his requirements.</p>
+
+<p>In that moment of silence an agitated voice whispered in his ear, and
+Bones's lean hand clutched his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir an' Excellency," breathed Bones, all of a twitter, "don't think I'm
+takin' advantage of my position, but it's the chance I've been lookin'
+for, sir. You'd do me an awful favour&mdash;you see, sir, I've got his career
+to consider&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth&mdash;&mdash;" began Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"Henry Hamilton Bones, sir," said Bones tremulously. "You'd set him up
+for life, sir. I must think of the child, hang it all! I know I'm a
+jolly old rotter to put my spoke in&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders gently released the frenzied grip of his lieutenant, and faced
+the wondering palaver.</p>
+
+<p>"Know all people that this day I give to you as king one whom you shall
+call M'songuri, which means in your tongue 'The Young and the Wise,' and
+who is called in my tongue N'risu M'ilitani Tibbetti, and this one is a
+child and well beloved by my lord Tibbetti, being to him as a son, and
+by M'ilitani and by me, Sandi."</p>
+
+<p>He raised his hand in challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"Wa! Whose men are you?" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"M'songuri!"</p>
+
+<p>The answer came in a deep-throated growl, and the assembly leapt to its
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Wa! Who rules this land?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>"M'songuri!"</p>
+
+<p>They locked arms and stamped first with the right foot and then with the
+left, in token of their acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>"Take your king," said Sanders, "and build him a beautiful hut, and his
+spirit shall dwell with you. This palaver is finished."</p>
+
+<p>Bones was speechless all the way down river. At irregular intervals he
+would grip Sanders's hand, but he was too full for speech.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton and his sister met the law-givers on the quay.</p>
+
+<p>"You're back sooner than I expected you, sir," said Hamilton. "Did Bones
+behave?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like a little gentleman," said Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bones," Patricia broke in eagerly, "Henry has cut another tooth."</p>
+
+<p>Bones's nod was grave and even distant.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go and see His Majesty," he said. "I presume he is in the
+palace?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton stared after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely," he asked irritably, "Bones isn't sickening for measles again?"</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TAMER OF BEASTS</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">N</span>ative
+folk, at any rate, are but children of a larger growth. In the
+main, their delinquencies may be classified under the heading of
+"naughtiness." They are mischievous and passionate, and they have a
+weakness for destroying things to discover the secrets of volition. A
+too prosperous nation mystifies less fortunate people, who demand of
+their elders and rulers some solution of the mystery of their rivals'
+progress. Such a ruler, unable to offer the necessary explanation, takes
+his spears to the discovery, and sometimes discovers too much for his
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The village of Jumburu stands on the edge of the bush country, where the
+lawless men of all nations dwell. This territory is filled with fierce
+communities, banded together against a common enemy&mdash;the law. They call
+this land the B'wigini, which means "the Nationless," and Jumburu's
+importance lies in the fact that it is the outpost of order and
+discipline.</p>
+
+<p>In Jumburu were two brothers, O'ka and B'suru, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>who had usurped the
+chieftainship of their uncle, the very famous K'sungasa, "very famous,"
+since he had been in his time a man of remarkable gifts, which he still
+retained to some extent, and in consequence enjoyed what was left of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>He was, by all accounts, as mad as a man could be, and in circumstances
+less favourable to himself his concerned relatives would have taken him
+a long journey into the forest he loved so well, and they would have put
+out his eyes and left him to the mercy of the beasts, such being the
+method of dealing with lunacy amongst people who, all unknown to
+themselves, were eugenists of a most inflexible kind.</p>
+
+<p>But to leave K'sungasa to the beasts would have been equivalent to
+delivering him to the care of his dearest friends, for he had an
+affinity for the wild dwellers of the bush, and all his life he had
+lived amongst them and loved them.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that he could arrest the parrot in the air by a "cl'k!" and
+could bring the bird screeching and fluttering to his hand. He could
+call the shy little monkeys from the high branches where they hid, and
+even the fiercest of buffaloes would at his word come snuffling and
+nosing his brown arm.</p>
+
+<p>So that, when he grew weak-minded, his relatives, after a long palaver,
+decided that for once the time-honoured customs of the land should be
+overridden, and since there was no other method of treating the blind
+but that prescribed by precedent, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>he should be allowed to live in a
+great hut at the edge of the village with his birds and snakes and
+wild cats, and that the direction of village affairs should pass to his
+nephews.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Commissioner Sanders knew all this, but did nothing. His task was to
+govern the territory, which meant to so direct affairs that the
+territory governed itself. When the fate of K'sungasa was in the
+balance, he sent word to the chief's nephews that he was somewhere in
+the neighbourhood, and that the revival of the bad old custom of
+blinding would be followed by the introduction of the bad new custom of
+hanging; but this had less effect upon the council of relatives&mdash;to whom
+Sanders's message was not transmitted&mdash;than the strange friendship which
+K'sungasa had for the forest folk.</p>
+
+<p>The nephews might have governed the village, exacted tribute,
+apportioned fishing rights, and administered justice for all time, but
+for the fact that there came a period of famine, when crops were bad and
+fish was scarce, and when, remarkably enough, the village of L'bini,
+distant no more than a few hours' paddling, had by a curious coincident
+raised record crops, and had, moreover, a glut of fish in their waters.</p>
+
+<p>There was the inevitable palaver and the inevitable solution. O'ka and
+B'suru led ten canoes to the offending village, slaughtered a few men
+and burnt a few huts. For two hours the combatants pranced and yelled
+and thrust at one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>another amidst a pandemonium of screaming women, and
+then Lieutenant Tibbetts dropped from the clouds with a most substantial
+platoon of Houssas, and there was a general sorting out.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders held a court on one of the middle islands near the Residency,
+and B'suru was sent to the Village of Irons for the term of his natural
+life. O'ka, who had fled to the bush, escaped, however, and with him a
+headman and a few followers.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Tibbetts, who had spent two profitable days in the village of
+Jumburu, came back to the Residency a very thoughtful young man.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with Bones?" asked Captain Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>His sister smiled over her book, but offered no other comment.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Pat?" demanded Hamilton sternly.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders looked at the girl with a twinkle in his grey eyes, and lit a
+cheroot. The relationships between Patricia Hamilton and Bones were a
+source of constant joy to him. Taciturn and a thought dour as he was,
+Pat would never have suspected the bubbling laughter which arose behind
+that lean brown face, unmovable and, in his moments of most intense
+enjoyment, expressionless.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones and I have a feud," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders smiled.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>"Not as violent a feud as O'ka and I have, I hope?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She frowned a little and looked at him anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't worry about the threats of the people you have punished?"
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't punished O'ka," said Sanders, "and an expedition into the
+bush would be too expensive an affair. He has apparently settled with
+the B'wigini people. If they take up his feud, they might give trouble.
+But what is your trouble with Bones?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must ask him," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton's opportunity came next day, when Bones applied for leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave?" said Captain Hamilton incredulously. "Leave, Bones? What the
+dickens do you want leave for?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones, standing as stiff as a ramrod before the office table at which
+his superior sat, saluted.</p>
+
+<p>"Urgent private affairs, sir," he said gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>"But you haven't any private affairs," protested Hamilton. "Your life is
+an open book&mdash;you were bragging about that fact yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir and brother-officer," said Bones firmly, "a crisis has arisen in my
+young life. My word, sir, has been called into doubt by your jolly old
+sister. I desire to vindicate my honour, my reputation, an' my
+veracity."</p>
+
+<p>"Pat has been pulling your leg!" suggested Hamilton, but Bones shook his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin' so indelicate, sir. Your revered an' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>lovely relative&mdash;God
+bless her jolly old heart!&mdash;expressed her doubt in <i>re</i> leopards an'
+buffaloes. I'm goin' out, sir, into the wilds&mdash;amidst dangers, Ham, old
+feller, that only seasoned veterans like you an' me can imagine&mdash;to
+bring proof that I am not only a sportsman, but a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>The timely arrival of Miss Patricia Hamilton, very beautiful in dazzling
+white, with her solar helmet perched at an angle, smote Bones to
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you been saying to Bones?" asked Hamilton severely.</p>
+
+<p>"She said&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I said&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They began and finished together.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones, you're a tell-tale," accused the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said Bones recklessly. "Don't spare me. I'm a liar an' a thief
+an' a murderer&mdash;don't mind me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I simply said that I didn't believe he shot the leopard&mdash;the one whose
+skin is in his hut."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," said Bones, with heavy sarcasm, "I didn't shoot it&mdash;oh, no! I
+froze it to death&mdash;I poisoned it!"</p>
+
+<p>"But did you shoot it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I shoot it, dear old Ham?" asked Bones, with great calmness.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?" asked Hamilton innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I shoot at that leopard," Bones went on deliberately, "an' was he
+found next mornin' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>cold an' dead, with a smile on his naughty old
+face?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton nodded, and Bones faced the girl expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Apologize, child," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do nothing of the kind," she replied, with some heat. "Did
+Bones shoot the leopard?"</p>
+
+<p>She appealed to her brother.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton looked from one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"When the leopard was found&mdash;&mdash;" he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to this, dear old sister," murmured Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"When the leopard was found, with a spear in its side&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently done after death by a wanderin' cad of a native," interposed
+Bones hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet, Bones," commanded the girl, and Bones shrugged his shoulders
+and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>"When the leopard was found," continued Hamilton, "he was certainly
+beyond human aid, and though no bullet mark was discovered, Bones
+conclusively proved&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, dear old officer," interrupted Bones. He had seen out of
+the tail of his eye a majestic figure crossing the square.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you allow me to produce scientific an' expert evidence?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton assented gravely, and Bones went to the door of the orderly
+room and roared a name.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall produce," he said quietly, but firmly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>"the evidence of one
+who enjoyed the confidence of dear old Professor What's-his-name, the
+eminent thigumy-ologist. Oh, Ali!"</p>
+
+<p>Ali Abid, a solemn figure, salaamed in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Not for nothing had he been factotum to a great bacteriologist before
+the demise of his master had driven him to service with a lieutenant of
+Houssas. His vocabulary smelt of the laboratory, his English was pure,
+undefiled, and unusual.</p>
+
+<p>"Ali, you remember my leopard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said Ali, shaking his head, "who can forget?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I kill him, Ali?" asked Bones. "Tell the lady everything."</p>
+
+<p>Ali bowed to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss or madame," he said, "the leopard (<i>Felis pardus</i>), a wild beast
+of the Felid&aelig; family, is indigenous to forest territory. The subject in
+question&mdash;to wit, the skin thereof exhibited by Sir Bones&mdash;was
+particularly ferocious, and departed this life as a result of hunting
+conducted by aforesaid. Examination of subject after demise under most
+scientific scrutiny revealed that said leopard (<i>Felis pardus</i>) suffered
+from weak heart, and primary cause of death was diagnosed as shock
+occasioned by large 'bang' from Sir Bones's rifle."</p>
+
+<p>"What did I say?" asked Bones complacently.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to tell me," gasped the girl, "that you <i>frightened</i> the
+leopard to death?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>Bones spread out his hands disparagingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard the evidence, dear old sister," he said; "there is
+nothing to add."</p>
+
+<p>She threw back her head and laughed until her grey eyes were swimming in
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bones, you humbug!" she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Bones drew himself up more stiffly than ever, stuck his monocle in his
+eye, and turned to his chief.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I understand, sir," he said, "that my leave is granted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven days," said Hamilton, and Bones swung round on his heel, knocked
+over Hamilton's stationery rack, stumbled over a chair, and strode
+gloomily from the hut.</p>
+
+<p>When Patricia Hamilton woke the next morning, she found a note pinned to
+her pillow.</p>
+
+<p>We may gloss over the impropriety of the proceedings which led to this
+phenomenon. Bones was an artist, and so small a matter as the
+proprieties did not come into his calculations.</p>
+
+<p>Patricia sat up in bed and read the letter.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Old Friend and Doutting Thos.</span>"<br />(Bones's spelling was
+always perfectly disgraceful),&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When this reaches you, when this reaches you, I shall be far, far
+away on my long and dangerus journey. I may not come back, I may
+not come back, for I and a faithful servant are about to penetrate
+to the lares of the wild <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>beasts of the forest, of the forest. I am
+determined to wipe out the reproach which you have made. I will
+bring back, not a dead leppard, not a dead leppard, but a live one,
+which I shall seeze with my own hands. I may lose my life in this
+rash and hazardus enterprise, but at least I shall vindycate my
+honour.&mdash;Farewell, dear old Patrisia.</p>
+
+<p class="right">"Your friend,</p>
+
+<p class="right2">"B."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Which proves," said Hamilton, when he was shown the letter, "that Bones
+is learning to spell. It only seems yesterday when he was spelling
+'Hamilton' with three m's. By the way, how did you get this letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I found it pinned to the door," said Patricia tactfully.</p>
+
+<p>Bones went by the shortest route to Jumburu, and was received without
+enthusiasm, for he had left a new chief to rule over a people who were
+near enough to the B'wigini to resent overmuch discipline. But his
+business was with K'sungasa, for the two days' stay which Bones had made
+in the village, and all that he had learnt of the old tamer, had been
+responsible for his reckless promise to Patricia Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>He came at a critical moment, for K'sungasa, a thin and knobbly old man,
+with dim eyes and an incessant chuckle, was very near his end. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>He lay
+on a fine raised bed, a big yellow-eyed wild cat at his feet, a monkey
+or two shivering by the bedside, and a sprawling litter of kittens&mdash;to
+which the wild cat leapt in a tremble of rage when Bones entered the
+hut&mdash;crawling in the sunlight which flooded the hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Tibbetti," croaked the old man, "I see you! This is a good time,
+for to-morrow I should be dead."</p>
+
+<p>"K'sungasa," said Bones, seating himself gingerly, and looking about for
+the snake which was usually coiled round the old man's stool, "that is
+foolish talk, for you will see many floods."</p>
+
+<p>"That is fine talk for the river folk," grinned the old man, "but not
+for we people of the forest, who never see flood and only little-little
+rivers. Now, I tell you, lord, that I am glad to die, because I have
+been full of mad thoughts for a long time, but now my mind is clear.
+Tell me, master, why you come."</p>
+
+<p>Bones explained his errand, and the old man's eyes brightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, if I could go with you to the forest, I would bring to you many
+beautiful leopards by my magic. Now, because I love Sandi, I will do
+this for you, so that you shall know how wise and cunning I am."</p>
+
+<p>In the woods about the village was a wild plant, the seeds of which,
+when pounded and boiled in an earthen vessel, produced, by a rough
+method of distillation, a most pungent liquid. Abid <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>spoke learnedly of
+<i>pimpinella anisum</i>, and probably he was right.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>Bones and his assistant made many excursions into the woods before they
+found and brought back the right plant. Fortunately it was seed-time,
+and once he was on the right track Bones had no difficulty in securing
+more than a sufficient quantity for his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>He made his distillation under the old man's directions, the fire
+burning in the middle of the hut. As the drops began to fall from the
+narrow neck of his retort, a fault sweet aroma filled the hut. First the
+cat, then the monkeys began to show signs of extraordinary agitation.
+Cat and kittens crouched as near the fire as they could, their heads
+craned towards the brown vessel, mewing and whimpering. Then the monkeys
+came, bright-eyed and eager.</p>
+
+<p>The scent brought the most unexpected beasts from every hole and crevice
+in the hut&mdash;brown rats, squirrels, a long black snake with spade-shaped
+head and diamond markings, little bush hares, a young buck, which came
+crashing through the forest and prinked timidly to the door of the hut.</p>
+
+<p>The old man on the bed called them all by name, and snapped his feeble
+fingers to them; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>but their eyes were on the retort and the crystal
+drops that trembled and fell from the lip of the narrow spout.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>A week later a speechless group stood before the Residency and focussed
+their astonished gaze upon the miracle.</p>
+
+<p>"The miracle" was a half-grown leopard cub, vividly marked. He was
+muzzled and held in leash by a chain affixed to a stout collar, and
+Bones, a picture of smug gratification, held the end of the chain.</p>
+
+<p>"But how&mdash;how did you catch him?" gasped the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Bones shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not for me, dear old friend, to tell of nights spent in the
+howlin' forest," he quavered, in the squeaky tone which invariably came
+to him when he was excited. "I'm not goin' to speak of myself. If you
+expect me to tell you how I trailed the jolly old leopard to his grisly
+lair an' fought with him single-handed, you'll be disappointed."</p>
+
+<p>"But did you track him to his lair?" demanded Hamilton, recovering his
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg of you, dear old officer, to discuss other matters," evaded Bones
+tactfully. "Here are the goods delivered, as per mine of the
+twenty-fourth instant."</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand to his pocket mechanically, and the cub looked up with a
+quick eager stare.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>"Bones, you're a wonderful fellow," said Sanders quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Bones bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," he said, "if you'll excuse me, I'll take my little friend to
+his new home."</p>
+
+<p>Before they realized what he was doing, he had slipped off the chain.
+Even Sanders stepped back and dropped his hand to the automatic pistol
+he carried in his hip pocket.</p>
+
+<p>But Bones, unconcerned, whistled and marched off to his hut, and the
+great cat followed humbly at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>That same night Bones strode across from his hut to the Residency,
+resolved upon a greater adventure yet. He would go out under the
+admiring eyes of Patricia Hamilton, and would return from the Residency
+woods a veritable Pied Piper, followed by a trail of forest denizens.</p>
+
+<p>In his pocket was a quart bottle, and his clothes reeked with the scent
+of wild aniseed. As a matter of fact, his secret would have been out the
+moment he entered Sanders's dining-room, but it so happened that his
+programme was doomed to interruption.</p>
+
+<p>He was half-way across the square when a dark figure rose from the
+ground and a harsh voice grunted "Kill!"</p>
+
+<p>He saw the flash of the spear in the starlight and leapt aside. A hand
+clutched at his jacket, but he wrenched himself free, leaving the
+garment in his assailant's hands.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>He was unarmed, and there was nothing left but flight.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders heard his yell, and sprang out to the darkness of the verandah
+as Bones flew up the steps.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the two men racing in pursuit, and fired twice. One man fell, the
+other swerved and was lost in the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>An answering shot came from the Houssa sentry at the far end of the
+square. Sanders saw a man running, and fired again, and again missed.</p>
+
+<p>Then out of the darkness blundered Ali Abid, his face grey with fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," he gasped, "wild animal (<i>Felis pardus</i>) has divested muzzlement
+and proper restraint, and is chasing various subjects outrageously."</p>
+
+<p>Even as he spoke a fourth figure sped across the ground before the
+Residency, so close that they could see the bundle he carried under his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"My jacket!" roared Bones. "Hi, stop him! Good Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>Swift on the heels of the flying man came a streak of yellow fur....</p>
+
+<p>Whether O'ka of the Jumburu outpaced the leopard, or the leopard
+overtook O'ka, is not known, but until the rains came and washed away
+the scent of crude aniseed, Bones dared not leave his hut by night for
+fear of the strange beasts that came snuffling at his hut, or sat in
+expectant and watchful circles about his dwelling, howling dismally.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MERCENARIES</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>here
+was a large brown desk in Sanders's study, a desk the edges of
+which had been worn yellow with constant rubbing. It was a very tidy
+desk, with two rows of books neatly grouped on the left and on the
+right, and held in place by brass rails. There were three tiers of wire
+baskets, a great white blotting-pad, a silver inkstand and four
+clean-looking pens.</p>
+
+<p>Lately, there had appeared a glass vase filled with flowers which were
+daily renewed. Except on certain solemn occasions, none intruded into
+this holy of holies. It is true that a change had been brought about by
+the arrival of Patricia Hamilton, for she had been accorded permission
+to use the study as she wished, and she it was who had introduced the
+floral decorations.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, such was the tradition of sanctuary which enveloped the study, that
+neither Captain Hamilton, her brother, nor Bones, her slave, had ever
+ventured to intrude thither in search of her, and if by chance they came
+to the door to speak to her, they unaccountably lowered their voices.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>On a certain summer morning, Hamilton sat at the desk, a stern and sober
+figure, and Bones, perspiring and rattled, sat on the edge of a chair
+facing him.</p>
+
+<p>The occasion was a solemn one, for Bones was undergoing his examination
+in subjects "X" and "Y" for promotion to the rank of Captain. The
+particular subject under discussion was "Map Reading and Field
+Sketching," and the inquisition was an oral one.</p>
+
+<p>"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton gravely, "you will please define a
+Base Line."</p>
+
+<p>Bones pushed back the hair straggling over his forehead, and blinked
+rapidly in an effort of memory.</p>
+
+<p>"A base line, dear old officer?" he repeated. "A base line, dear old
+Ham&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Restrain your endearing terms," said Hamilton, "you won't get any extra
+marks for 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"A base line?" mused Bones; then, "Whoop! I've got it! God bless your
+jolly old soul! I thought I'd foozled it. A base line," he said loudly,
+"is the difference of level between two adjacent contours. How's that,
+umpire?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong," said Hamilton; "you're describing a Vertical Interval."</p>
+
+<p>Bones glared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure, dear old chap?" he demanded truculently. "Have a look at
+the book, jolly old friend, your poor old eyes ain't what they used to
+be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton in ponderous reproof, "you are
+behaving very strangely."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, dear old Ham," wheedled Bones "can't you pretend you asked
+me what a Vertical Interval was?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton reached round to find something to throw, but this was
+Sanders's study.</p>
+
+<p>"You have a criminal mind, Bones," he said helplessly. "Now get on with
+it. What are 'Hachures'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hachures?" said Bones, shutting his eye. "Hachures? Now I know what
+Hachures are. A lot of people would think they were chickens, but I
+know ... they're a sort of line ... when you're drawing a hill ...
+wiggly-waggly lines ... you know the funny things ... a sort of...." Bones
+made mysterious and erratic gestures in the air, "shading ... water, dear
+old friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you feeling faint?" asked Hamilton, jumping up in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"No, silly ass ... shadings... direction of water&mdash;am I right, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not being a thought-reader I can't visualize your disordered mind,"
+said Hamilton, "but Hachures are the conventional method of representing
+hill features by shading in short vertical lines to indicate the slope
+and the water flow. I gather that you have a hazy idea of what the
+answer should be."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, dear old sir, for that generous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>tribute to my grasp of
+military science," said Bones. "An' now proceed to the next
+torture&mdash;which will you have, sir, rack or thumbscrew?&mdash;oh, thank you,
+Horace, I'll have a glass of boiling oil."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up talking to yourself," growled Hamilton, "and tell me what is
+meant by 'Orienting a Map'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Turning it to the east," said Bones promptly. "Next, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"What is meant by 'Orienting a Map'?" asked Hamilton patiently.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you once," said Bones defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Orienting a Map," said Hamilton, "as I have explained to you a thousand
+times, means setting your map or plane-table so that the north line lies
+north."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, sir," said Bones firmly, "the east line would be east,
+and I claim to have answered the question to your entire satisfaction."</p>
+
+<p>"Continue to claim," snarled Hamilton. "I shall mark you zero for that
+answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Make it one," pleaded Bones. "Be a sport, dear old Ham&mdash;I've found a
+new fishin' pool."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"There never are any fish in the pools you find," he said dubiously.
+"Anyway, I'll reserve my decision until I've made a cast or two."</p>
+
+<p>They adjourned for tiffin soon after.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you do, Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>"Fine," said Bones enthusiastically; "I simply bowled over every
+question that your dear old brother asked. In fact, Ham admitted that I
+knew much more about some things than he did."</p>
+
+<p>"What I said," corrected Hamilton, "was that your information on certain
+subjects was so novel that I doubted whether even the staff college
+shared it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the same thing," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"You should try him on military history," suggested Sanders dryly. "I've
+just been hearing from Bosambo&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bones coughed and blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, sir an' Excellency," he confessed, "I was practisin' on
+Bosambo. You mightn't be aware of the fact, but I like to hear myself
+speak&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" gasped Hamilton in amazement, "you're wronging yourself, Bones!"</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean, sir," Bones went on with dignity, "is that if I lecture
+somebody on a subject I remember what I've said."</p>
+
+<p>"Always providing that you understand what you're saying," suggested
+Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway," said Sanders, with his quiet smile, "Bones has filled Bosambo
+with a passionate desire to emulate Napoleon, and Bosambo has been
+making tentative inquiries as to whether he can raise an Old Guard or
+enlist a mercenary army."</p>
+
+<p>"I flatter myself&mdash;&mdash;" began Bones.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>"Why not?" said Hamilton, rising. "It's the only chance you'll have of
+hearing something complimentary about yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> believe in you, Bones," said a smiling Patricia. "I think you're
+really wonderful, and that Ham is a brute."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never, never contradict you, dear Miss Patricia," said Bones; "an'
+after the jolly old Commissioner has gone&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going away again, are you?" she asked, turning to Sanders.
+"Why, you have only just come back from the interior."</p>
+
+<p>There was genuine disappointment in her eyes, and Sanders experienced a
+strange thrill the like of which he had never known before.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said with a nod. "There is a palaver of sorts in the Morjaba
+country&mdash;the most curious palaver I have ever been called upon to hold."</p>
+
+<p>And indeed he spoke the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the frontiers of the Akasava, and separated from all the other
+Territories by a curious bush belt which ran almost in a straight line
+for seventy miles, were the people of Morjaba. They were a folk isolated
+from territorial life, and Sanders saw them once every year and no more
+frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers of taxes
+and law-abiding, having quarrels with none. The bush (reputedly the
+abode of ghosts) was, save at one point, impenetrable. Nature had
+plaited a natural wall on one side, and had given the tribe the
+protection <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>of high mountains to the north and a broad swamp to the
+west.</p>
+
+<p>The fierce storms of passion and hate which burst upon the river at
+intervals and sent thousands of spears to a blooding, were scarcely
+echoed in this sanctuary-land. The marauders of the Great King's country
+to the north never fetched across the smooth moraine of the mountains,
+and the evil people of The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp were held back by the
+treacherous bogland wherein, <i>cala-cala</i>, a whole army had been
+swallowed up.</p>
+
+<p>Thus protected, the Morjabian folk grew fat and rich. The land was a
+veritable treasure of Nature, and it is a fact that in the dialect they
+speak, there is no word which means "hunger."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>Yet the people of the Morjaba were not without their crises.</p>
+
+<p>S'kobi, the stout chief, held a great court which was attended by ten
+thousand people, for at that court was to be concluded for ever the feud
+between the M'gimi and the M'joro&mdash;a feud which went back for the
+greater part of fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>The M'gimi were the traditional warrior tribe, the bearers of arms, and,
+as their name ("The High Lookers") implied, the proudest and most
+exclusive of the people. For every man was the descendant of a chief,
+and it was "easier for fish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>to walk," as the saying goes, than for a
+man of the M'joro ("The Diggers") to secure admission to the caste.
+Three lateral cuts on either cheek was the mark of the M'gimi&mdash;wounds
+made, upon the warrior's initiation to the order, with the razor-edged
+blade of a killing-spear. They lived apart in three camps to the number
+of six thousand men, and for five years from the hour of their
+initiation they neither married nor courted. The M'gimi turned their
+backs to women, and did not suffer their presence in their camps. And if
+any man departed from this austere rule he was taken to the Breaking
+Tree, his four limbs were fractured, and he was hoisted to the lower
+branches, between which a litter was swung, and his regiment sat beneath
+the tree neither eating, drinking nor sleeping until he died. Sometimes
+this was a matter of days. As for the woman who had tempted his eye and
+his tongue, she was a witness.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the M'gimi preserved their traditions of austerity. They were
+famous walkers and jumpers. They threw heavy spears and fought great
+sham-fights, and they did every violent exercise save till the ground.</p>
+
+<p>This was the sum and substance of the complaint which had at last come
+to a head.</p>
+
+<p>S'gono, the spokesman of The Diggers, was a headman of the inner lands,
+and spoke with bitter prejudice, since his own son had been rejected by
+the M'gimi captains as being unworthy.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we men dig and sow for such as these?" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>he asked. "Now give a
+judgment, King! Every moon we must take the best of our fruit and the
+finest of our fish. Also so many goats and so much salt, and it is
+swallowed up."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet if I send them away," said the king, "how shall I protect this land
+against the warriors of the Akasava and the evil men of the swamp? Also
+of the Ochori, who are four days' march across good ground?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord King," said S'gono, "are there no M'gimi amongst us who have
+passed from the camp and have their women and their children? May not
+these take the spear again? And are not we M'joro folk men? By my life!
+I will raise as many spears from The Diggers and captain them with
+M'joro men&mdash;this I could do between the moons and none would say that
+you were not protected. For we are men as bold as they."</p>
+
+<p>The king saw that the M'gimi party was in the minority. Moreover, he had
+little sympathy with the warrior caste, for his beginnings were basely
+rooted in the soil, and two of his sons had no more than scraped into
+the M'gimi.</p>
+
+<p>"This thing shall be done," said the king, and the roar of approval
+which swept up the little hillock on which he sat was his reward.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders, learning something of these doings, had come in haste, moving
+across the Lower Akasava by a short cut, risking the chagrin of certain
+chiefs and friends who would be shocked and mortified by his apparent
+lack of courtesy in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>missing the ceremonious call which was their due.</p>
+
+<p>But his business was very urgent, otherwise he would not have travelled
+by Nobolama&mdash;The-River-that-comes-and-goes.</p>
+
+<p>He was fortunate in that he found deep water for the <i>Wiggle</i> as far as
+the edge of this pleasant land. A two days' trek through the forest
+brought him to the great city of Morjaba. In all the Territories there
+was no such city as this, for it stretched for miles on either hand, and
+indeed was one of the most densely populated towns within a radius of
+five hundred miles.</p>
+
+<p>S'kobi came waddling to meet his governor with maize, plucked in haste
+from the gardens he passed, and salt, grabbed at the first news of
+Sanders's arrival, in his big hands. These he extended as he puffed to
+where Sanders sat at the edge of the city.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," he wheezed, "none came with news of this great honour, or my
+young men would have met you, and my maidens would have danced the road
+flat with their feet. Take!"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders extended both palms and received the tribute of salt and corn,
+and solemnly handed the crushed mess to his orderly.</p>
+
+<p>"O S'kobi," he said, "I came swiftly to make a secret palaver with you,
+and my time is short."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, I am your man," said S'kobi, and signalled his councillors and
+elder men to a distance.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders was in some difficulty to find a beginning.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>"You know, S'kobi, that I love your people as my children," he said,
+"for they are good folk who are faithful to government and do ill to
+none."</p>
+
+<p>"Wa!" said S'kobi.</p>
+
+<p>"Also you know that spearmen and warriors I do not love, for spears are
+war and warriors are great lovers of fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, you speak the truth," said the other, nodding, "therefore in this
+land I will have made a law that there shall be no spears, save those
+which sleep in the shadow of my hut. Now well I know why you have come
+to make this palaver, for you have heard with your beautiful long ears
+that I have sent away my fighting regiments."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"You speak truly, my friend," he said, and S'kobi beamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Six times a thousand spears I had&mdash;and, lord, spears grow no corn.
+Rather are they terrible eaters. And now I have sent them to their
+villages, and at the next moon they should have burnt their fine
+war-knives, but for a certain happening. We folk of Morjaba have no
+enemies, and we do good to all. Moreover, lord, as you know, we have
+amongst us many folk of the Isisi, of the Akasava and the N'gombi, also
+men from the Great King's land beyond the High Rocks, and the little
+folk from The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp. Therefore, who shall attack us
+since we have kinsmen of all amongst us?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>Sanders regarded the jovial king with a sad little smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I done well by all men?" he asked quietly. "Have I not governed
+the land so that punishment comes swiftly to those who break the law?
+Yet, S'kobi, do not the Akasava and the Isisi, the N'gombi and the Lower
+River folk take their spears against me? Now I tell you this which I
+have discovered. In all beasts great and little there are mothers who
+have young ones and fathers who fight that none shall harass the
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, this is the way of life," said S'kobi.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the way of the Bigger Life," said Sanders, "and greatly the way
+of man-life. For the women bring children to the land and the men sit
+with their spears ready to fight all who would injure their women. And
+so long as life lasts, S'kobi, the women will bear and the men will
+guard; it is the way of Nature, and you shall not take from men the
+desire for slaughter until you have dried from the hearts of women the
+yearning for children."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said S'kobi, a fat man and easily puzzled, "what shall be the
+answer to this strange riddle you set me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only this," said Sanders rising, "I wish peace in this land, but there
+can be no peace between the leopard who has teeth and claws and the
+rabbit who has neither tooth nor claw. Does the leopard fight the lion
+or the lion the leopard? They live <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>in peace, for each is terrible in
+his way, and each fears the other. I tell you this, that you live in
+love with your neighbours not because of your kindness, but because of
+your spears. Call them back to your city, S'kobi."</p>
+
+<p>The chief's large face wrinkled in a frown.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," he said, "that cannot be, for these men have marched away from
+my country to find a people who will feed them, for they are too proud
+to dig the ground."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, damn!" said Sanders in despair, and went back the way he came,
+feeling singularly helpless.</p>
+
+<p>The Odyssey of the discarded army of the Morjaba has yet to be written.
+Paradoxically enough, its primary mission was a peaceful one, and when
+it found first the frontiers of the Akasava and then the river borders
+of the Isisi closed against it, it turned to the north in an endeavour to
+find service under the Great King, beyond the mountains. Here it was
+repulsed and its pacific intentions doubted. The M'gimi formed a camp a
+day's march from the Ochori border, and were on the thin line which
+separates unemployment from anarchy when Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori,
+who had learnt of their presence, came upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo was a born politician. He had the sense of opportunity and that
+strange haze of hopeful but indefinite purpose which is the foundation
+of the successful poet and statesman, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>but which, when unsuccessfully
+developed, is described as "temperament."</p>
+
+<p>Bones, paying a business call upon the Ochori, found a new township
+grown up on the forest side of the city. He also discovered evidence of
+discontent in Bosambo's harassed people, who had been called upon to
+provide fish and meal for the greater part of six thousand men who were
+too proud to work.</p>
+
+<p>"Master," said Bosambo, "I have often desired such an army as this, for
+my Ochori fighters are few. Now, lord, with these men I can hold the
+Upper River for your King, and Sandi and none dare speak against him.
+Thus would N'poloyani, who is your good friend, have done."</p>
+
+<p>"But who shall feed these men, Bosambo?" demanded Bones hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"All things are with God," replied Bosambo piously.</p>
+
+<p>Bones collected all the available information upon the matter and took
+it back to headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>"H'm," said Sanders when he had concluded his recital, "if it were any
+other man but Bosambo ... you would require another battalion,
+Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"But what has Bosambo done?" asked Patricia Hamilton, admitted to the
+council.</p>
+
+<p>"He is being Napoleonic," said Sanders, with a glance at the youthful
+authority on military history, and Bones squirmed and made strange
+noises. "We will see how it works out. How <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>on earth is he going to feed
+them, Bones?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly the question I asked, sir an' Excellency," said Bones in
+triumph. "'Why, you silly old ass&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the startled Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I said to Bosambo, sir," explained Bones hastily. "'Why,
+you silly old ass,' I said, 'how are you going to grub 'em?' 'Lord
+Bones,' said Bosambo, 'that's the jolly old problem that I'm workin'
+out.'"</p>
+
+<p>How Bosambo worked out his problem may be gathered.</p>
+
+<p>"There is some talk of an Akasava rising," said Sanders at breakfast one
+morning. "I don't know why this should be, for my information is that
+the Akasava folk are fairly placid."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does the news come from, sir?" asked Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"From the Isisi king&mdash;he's in a devil of a funk, and has begged Bosambo
+to send him help."</p>
+
+<p>That help was forthcoming in the shape of Bosambo's new army, which
+arrived on the outskirts of the Isisi city and sat in idleness for a
+month, at the end of which time the people of the Isisi represented to
+their king that they would, on the whole, prefer war to a peace which
+put them on half rations in order that six thousand proud warriors might
+live on the fat of the land.</p>
+
+<p>The M'gimi warriors marched back to the Ochori, each man carrying a
+month's supply of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>maize and salt, wrung from the resentful peasants of
+the Isisi.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks after, Bosambo sent an envoy to the King of the Akasava.</p>
+
+<p>"Let no man know this, Gubara, lest it come to the ears of Sandi, and
+you, who are very innocent, be wrongly blamed," said the envoy solemnly.
+"Thus says Bosambo: It has come to my ears that the N'gombi are secretly
+arming and will very soon send a forest of spears against the Akasava.
+Say this to Gubara, that because my stomach is filled with sorrow I will
+help him. Because I am very powerful, because of my friendship with
+Bonesi and his cousin, N'poloyani, who is also married to Bonesi's aunt,
+I have a great army which I will send to the Akasava, and when the
+N'gombi hear of this they will send away their spears and there will be
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>The Akasava chief, a nervous man with the memory of all the discomforts
+which follow tribal wars, eagerly assented. For two months Bosambo's
+army sat down like a cloud of locusts and ate the Akasava to a condition
+bordering upon famine.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of that time they marched to the N'gombi country, news having
+been brought by Bosambo's messengers that the Great King was crossing
+the western mountains with a terrible army to seize the N'gombi forests.
+How long this novel method of provisioning his army might have continued
+may only be guessed, for in the midst of Bosambo's plans for maintaining
+an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>army at the expense of his neighbours there was a great happening in
+the Morjaba country.</p>
+
+<p>S'kobi, the fat chief, had watched the departure of his warriors with
+something like relief. He was gratified, moreover (native-like), by the
+fact that he had confounded Sanders. But when the Commissioner had gone
+and S'kobi remembered all that he had said, a great doubt settled like a
+pall upon his mind. For three days he sat, a dejected figure, on the
+high carved stool of state before his house, and at the end of that time
+he summoned S'gono, the M'joro.</p>
+
+<p>"S'gono," said he, "I am troubled in my stomach because of certain
+things which our lord Sandi has said."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon he told the plebeian councillor much of what Sanders had said.</p>
+
+<p>"And now my M'gimi are with Bosambo of the Ochori, and he sells them to
+this people and that for so much treasure and food."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said S'gono, "is my word nothing? Did I not say that I would
+raise spears more wonderful than the M'gimi? Give me leave, King, and
+you shall find an army that shall grow in a night. I, S'gono, son of
+Mocharlabili Yoka, say this!"</p>
+
+<p>So messengers went forth to all the villages of the Morjaba calling the
+young men to the king's hut, and on the third week there stood on a
+plateau beneath the king's palaver house a most wonderful host.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>"Let them march across the plain and make the Dance of Killing," said
+the satisfied king, and S'gono hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord King," he pleaded, "these are new soldiers, and they are not yet
+wise in the ways of warriors. Also they will not take the chiefs I gave
+them, but have chosen their own, so that each company have two leaders
+who say evil things of one another."</p>
+
+<p>S'kobi opened his round eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"The M'gimi did not do this," he said dubiously, "for when their
+captains spoke they leapt first with one leg and then with the other,
+which was beautiful to see and very terrifying to our enemies."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," begged the agitated S'gono, "give me the space of a moon and
+they shall leap with both legs and dance in a most curious manner."</p>
+
+<p>A spy retailed this promise to a certain giant chief of the Great King
+who was sitting on the Morjaba slopes of the mountains with four
+thousand spears, awaiting a favourable moment to ford the river which
+separated him from the rich lands of the northern Morjaba.</p>
+
+<p>This giant heard the tidings with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Soon they shall leap without heads," he said, "for without the
+M'gimi they are little children. For twenty seasons we have waited,
+and now comes our fine night. Go you, B'furo, to the Chief of
+The-Folk-beyond-the-Swamp and tell him that when he sees three fires on
+this mountain he shall <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>attack across the swamp by the road which he
+knows."</p>
+
+<p>It was a well-planned campaign which the Great King's generals and the
+Chief of The-People-beyond-the-Marsh had organized. With the passing of
+the warrior caste the enemies of the Morjaba had moved swiftly. The path
+across the swamp had been known for years, but the M'gimi had had one of
+their camps so situated that no enemy could debouch across, and had so
+ordered their dispositions that the northern river boundary was
+automatically safeguarded.</p>
+
+<p>Now S'gono was a man of the fields, a grower and seller of maize and a
+breeder of goats. And he had planned his new army as he would plan a new
+garden, on the basis that the nearer the army was to the capital, the
+easier it was to maintain. In consequence the river-ford was unguarded,
+and there were two thousand spears across the marshes before a scared
+minister of war apprehended any danger.</p>
+
+<p>He flung his new troops against the Great King's chief captain in a
+desperate attempt to hold back the principal invader. At the same time,
+more by luck than good generalship, he pushed the evil people of the
+marsh back to their native element.</p>
+
+<p>For two days the Morjaba fought desperately if unskilfully against the
+seasoned troops of the Great King, while messengers hurried east and
+south, seeking help.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>Bosambo's intelligence department may have shown remarkable prescience
+in unearthing the plot against the peace and security of the Morjaba, or
+it may have been (and this is Sanders's theory) that Bosambo was on his
+way to the Morjaba with a cock and bull story of imminent danger. He was
+on the frontier when the king's messenger came, and Bosambo returned
+with the courier to treat in person.</p>
+
+<p>"Five thousand loads of corn I will give you, Bosambo," said the king,
+"also a hundred bags of salt. Also two hundred women who shall be slaves
+in your house."</p>
+
+<p>There was some bargaining, for Bosambo had no need of slaves, but
+urgently wanted goats. In the end he brought up his hirelings, and the
+people of the Morjaba city literally fell on the necks of the returned
+M'gimi.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy had forced the northern defences and were half-way to the city
+when the M'gimi fell upon their flank.</p>
+
+<p>The giant chief of the Great King's army saw the ordered ranks of the
+old army driving in his flank, and sent for his own captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Go swiftly to our lord, the King, and say that I am a dead man."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke no more than the truth, for he fell at the hand of Bosambo, who
+made a mental resolve to increase his demand on the herds of S'kobi in
+consequence.</p>
+
+<p>For the greater part of a month Bosambo was a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>welcome visitor, and at
+the end of that time he made his preparations to depart.</p>
+
+<p>Carriers and herdsmen drove or portered his reward back to the Ochori
+country, marching one day ahead of the main body.</p>
+
+<p>The M'gimi were summoned for the march at dawn, but at dawn Bosambo
+found himself alone on the plateau, save for the few Ochori headmen who
+had accompanied him on his journey.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said S'kobi, "my fine soldiers do not go with you, for I have
+seen how wise is Sandi who is my father and my mother."</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo choked, and as was usual in moments of intense emotion, found
+refuge in English.</p>
+
+<p>"Dam' nigger!" he said wrathfully, "I bring um army, I feed um, I keep
+um proper&mdash;you pinch um! Black t'ief! Pig! You bad feller! I speak you
+bad for N'poloyani&mdash;him fine feller."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the uncomprehending king, "I see that you are like Sandi
+for you speak his tongue. He also said 'Dam' very loudly. I think it is
+the word white folk say when they are happy."</p>
+
+<p>Bosambo met Bones hurrying to the scene of the fighting, and told his
+tale.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said he in conclusion, "what was I to do, for you told nothing
+of the ways of N'poloyani when his army was stolen from him. Tell me
+now, Tibbetti, what this man would have done."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>But Bones shook his head severely.</p>
+
+<p>"This I cannot tell you, Bosambo," he said, "for if I do you will tell
+others, and my lord N'poloyani will never forgive me."</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WATERS OF MADNESS</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">U</span>nexpected
+things happen in the Territories which Mr. Commissioner
+Sanders rules. As for example: Bones had gone down to the beach to "take
+the mail." This usually meant no more than receiving a mail-bag wildly
+flung from a dancing surf-boat. On this occasion Bones was surprised to
+discover that the boat had beached and had landed, not only the mail,
+but a stranger with his baggage.</p>
+
+<p>He was a clean-shaven, plump man, in spotless white, and he greeted
+Bones with a friendly nod. "Morning!" he said. "I've got your mail."</p>
+
+<p>Bones extended his hand and took the bag without evidence of any
+particular enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Sanders about?" asked the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sanders is in residence, sir," said Bones, ponderously polite.</p>
+
+<p>The other laughed. "Show the way," he said briskly.</p>
+
+<p>Bones looked at the new-comer from the ventilator of his pith helmet to
+the soles of his pipe-clayed shoes. "Excuse me, dear old sir," he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>said,
+"have I the honour of addressin' the Secretary of State for War?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered the other in surprise. "What made you think that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," said Bones, with rising wrath, "he's the only fellow that
+needn't say 'please' to me."</p>
+
+<p>The man roared with laughter. "Sorry," he said. "<i>Please</i> show me the
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"Follow me, sir," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders was not "in residence," being, in fact, inspecting some
+recent&mdash;and native&mdash;repairs to the boilers of the <i>Zaire</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger drew up a chair on the stoep without invitation and seated
+himself. He looked around. Patricia Hamilton was at the far end of the
+stoep, reading a book. She had glanced up just long enough to note and
+wonder at the new arrival. "Deuced pretty girl that," said the stranger,
+lighting a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon?" said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"I say that is a deuced pretty girl," said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"And you're a deuced brute, dear sir," said Bones, "but hitherto I have
+not commented on the fact."</p>
+
+<p>The man looked up quickly. "What are you here," he asked&mdash;"a clerk or
+something?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones did not so much as flush. "Oh, no," he said sweetly. "I am an
+officer of Houssas&mdash;rank, lieutenant. My task is to tame the uncivilized
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>beast an' entertain the civilized pig with a selection of music. Would
+you like to hear our gramophone?"</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer frowned. What brilliant effort of persiflage was to follow
+will never be known, for at that moment came Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger rose and produced a pocket-book, from which he extracted a
+card and a letter. "Good morning, Commissioner!" he said. "My name's
+Corklan&mdash;P. T. Corklan, of Corklan, Besset and Lyons."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," said Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a letter for you," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders took the note, opened it, and read. It bore the neat signature
+of an Under-Secretary of State and the embossed heading of the
+Extra-Territorial Office, and it commended Mr. P. T. Corklan to Mr.
+Commissioner Sanders, and requested him to let Mr. Corklan pass without
+let or hindrance through the Territories, and to render him every
+assistance "compatible with exigencies of the Service" in his "inquiries
+into sugar production from the sweet potato."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have taken this to the Administrator," said Sanders, "and it
+should bear his signature."</p>
+
+<p>"There's the letter," said the man shortly. "If that's not enough, and
+the signature of the Secretary of State isn't sufficient, I'm going
+straight back to England and tell him so."</p>
+
+<p>"You may go to the devil and tell him so," said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>Sanders calmly; "but
+you do not pass into these Territories until I have received telegraphic
+authority from my chief. Bones, take this man to your hut, and let your
+people do what they can for him." And he turned and walked into the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall hear about this," said Mr. Corklan, picking up his baggage.</p>
+
+<p>"This way, dear old pilgrim," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's going to carry my bag?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your name escapes me," said Bones, "but, if you'll glance at your
+visitin' card, you will find the name of the porter legibly inscribed."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders compressed the circumstances into a hundred-word telegram worded
+in his own economical style.</p>
+
+<p>It happened that the Administrator was away on a shooting trip, and it
+was his cautious secretary who replied&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Administration to Sanders.&mdash;Duplicate authority here. Let Corklan
+proceed at own risk. Warn him dangers."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better go along and tell him," said Sanders. "He can leave at
+once, and the sooner the better."</p>
+
+<p>Bones delivered the message. The man was sitting on his host's bed, and
+the floor was covered with cigar ash. Worst abomination of all, was a
+large bottle of whisky, which he had produced from one of his bags, and
+a reeking glass, which he had produced from Bones's sideboard.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>"So I can go to-night, can I?" said Mr. Corklan. "That's all right. Now,
+what about conveyance, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones had now reached the stage where he had ceased to be annoyed, and
+when he found some interest in the situation. "What sort of conveyance
+would you like, sir?" he asked curiously.</p>
+
+<p>(If you can imagine him pausing half a bar before every "sir," you may
+value its emphasis.)</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't there a steamer I can have?" demanded the man. "Hasn't Sanders
+got a Government steamer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon my swooning," said Bones, sinking into a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how am I going to get up?" asked the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a good swimmer?" demanded Bones innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," said Mr. Corklan, "you aren't a bad fellow. I rather like
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," said Bones simply.</p>
+
+<p>"I rather like you," repeated Mr. Corklan. "You might give me a little
+help."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very unlikely that I shall," said Bones. "But produce your
+proposition, dear old adventurer."</p>
+
+<p>"That is just what I am," said the other. He bit off the end of another
+cigar and lit it with the glowing butt of the old one. "I have knocked
+about all over the world, and I have done everything. I've now a chance
+of making a fortune. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>There is a tribe here called the N'gombi. They
+live in a wonderful rubber country, and I am told that they have got all
+the ivory in the world, and stacks of rubber hidden away."</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is a fact&mdash;and Bones was surprised to hear it related by the
+stranger&mdash;that the N'gombi are great misers and hoarders of elephant
+tusks. For hundreds of years they have traded ivory and rubber, and
+every village has its secret storehouse. The Government had tried for
+years to wheedle the N'gombi into depositing their wealth in some State
+store, for riches mean war sooner or later. They lived in great
+forests&mdash;the word N'gombi means "interior"&mdash;in lands full of elephants
+and rich in rubber trees.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a regular information bureau," said Bones admiringly. "But what
+has this to do with your inquiry into the origin of the candy tree?"</p>
+
+<p>The man smoked in silence for awhile, then he pulled from his pocket a
+big map. Again Bones was surprised, because the map he produced was the
+official map of the Territories. He traced the river with his fat
+forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is the N'gombi country from the east bank of the Isisi, and this
+is all forest, and a rubber tree to every ten square yards."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't counted them," said Bones, "but I'll take your word."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what does this mean?" Mr. Corklan indicated a twisting line of
+dots and dashes which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>began at the junction of the Isisi River and the
+Great River, and wound tortuously over five hundred miles of country
+until it struck the Sigi River, which runs through Spanish territory.
+"What is that?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That, or those," said Bones, "are the footprints of the mighty swoozlum
+bird that barks with its eyes an' lives on buttered toast an' hardware."</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you what I know it is," said the man, looking up and
+looking Bones straight in the eye&mdash;"it is one of those secret rivers you
+are always finding in these 'wet' countries. The natives tell you about
+'em, but you never find 'em. They are rivers that only exist about once
+in a blue moon, when the river is very high and the rains are very
+heavy. Now, down in the Spanish territory"&mdash;he touched Bones's knee with
+great emphasis&mdash;"they tell me that their end of the secret river is in
+flood."</p>
+
+<p>"They will tell you anything in the Spanish territory," said Bones
+pleasantly. "They'd tell you your jolly old fortune if you'd cross their
+palms with silver."</p>
+
+<p>"What about your end?" asked the man, ignoring the scepticism of his
+host.</p>
+
+<p>"Our end?" said Bones. "Well, you will find out for yourself. I'd hate
+to disappoint you."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, how am I going up?" asked the man after a pause.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>"You can hire a canoe, and live on the land, unless you have brought
+stores."</p>
+
+<p>The man chuckled. "I've brought no stores. Here, I will show you
+something," he said. "You are a very good fellow." He opened his bag and
+took out a tight packet which looked like thin skins. There must have
+been two or three hundred of them. "That's my speciality," he said. He
+nipped the string that tied them together, stripped one off, and,
+putting his lips to one end, blew. The skin swelled up like a toy
+balloon. "Do you know what that is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I cannot say I do," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard of Soemmering's process?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what decimal 1986 signifies?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've got me guessing, my lad," said Bones admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>The other chuckled, threw the skins into his bag, and closed it with a
+snap. "That's my little joke," he said. "All my friends tell me it will
+be the death of me one of these days. I like to puzzle people"&mdash;he
+smiled amiably and triumphantly in Bones's face&mdash;"I like to tell them
+the truth in such a way they don't understand it. If they understood
+it&mdash;Heavens, there'd be the devil to pay!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are an ingenious fellow," said Bones, "but I don't like your face.
+You will forgive my frankness, dear old friend."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>"Faces aren't fortunes," said the other complacently, "and I am going
+out of this country with money sticking to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry for you," said Bones, shaking his head; "I hate to see
+fellows with illusions."</p>
+
+<p>He reported all that occurred to the Commissioner, and Sanders was a
+little worried.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I knew what his game is," he said; "I'd stop him like a shot,
+but I can't very well in the face of the Administrator's wire. Anyway,
+he will get nothing out of the N'gombi. I've tried every method to make
+the beggars bank their surpluses, and I have failed."</p>
+
+<p>"He has got to come back this way, at any rate," said Hamilton, "and I
+cannot see that he will do much harm."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the rest of his baggage like?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has a case of things that look like concave copper plates, sir,"
+said Bones, "very thin copper, but copper. Then he has two or three
+copper pipes, and that is about his outfit."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Corklan was evidently no stranger to the coast, and Bones, who
+watched the man's canoe being loaded that afternoon, and heard his
+fluent observations on the slackness of his paddlers, realized that his
+acquaintance with Central Africa was an extensive one. He cursed in
+Swahili and Portuguese, and his language was forcible and impolite.
+"Well," he said at last, "I'll <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>be getting along. I'll make a fishing
+village for the night, and I ought to reach my destination in a week. I
+shan't be seeing you again, so I'll say good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you suppose you're going to get out of the country?" asked Bones
+curiously.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Corklan laughed. "So long!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, my dashin' old explorer," said Bones. "A little
+formality&mdash;I want to see your trunks opened."</p>
+
+<p>A look of suspicion dawned on the man's face. "What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little formality, my jolly old hero," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you say so before?" growled the man, and had his two trunks
+landed. "I suppose you know you're exceeding your duty?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know&mdash;thanks for tellin' me," said Bones. "The fact is, sir
+an' fellow-man, I'm the Custom House officer."</p>
+
+<p>The man opened his bags, and Bones explored. He found three bottles of
+whisky, and these he extracted.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the idea?" asked Mr. Corklan.</p>
+
+<p>Bones answered him by breaking the bottles on a near-by stone.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, what the dickens&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wine is a mocker," said Bones, "strong drink is ragin'. This is what is
+termed in the land of Hope an' Glory a prohibition State, an' I'm
+entitled to fine you five hundred of the brightest an' best <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>for
+attemptin' to smuggle intoxicants into our innocent country."</p>
+
+<p>Bones expected an outburst; instead, his speech evoked no more than a
+snigger.</p>
+
+<p>"You're funny," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>"My friends tell me so," admitted Bones. "But there's nothin' funny
+about drink. Acquainted as you are with the peculiar workin's of the
+native psychology, dear sir, you will understand the primitive cravin'
+of the untutored mind for the enemy that we put in our mouths to steal
+away our silly old brains. I wish you 'bon voyage.'"</p>
+
+<p>"So long," said Mr. Corklan.</p>
+
+<p>Bones went back to the Residency and made his report, and there, for the
+time being, the matter ended. It was not unusual for wandering
+scientists, manufacturers, and representatives of shipping companies to
+arrive armed with letters of introduction or command, and to be
+dispatched into the interior. The visits, happily, were few and far
+between. On this occasion Sanders, being uneasy, sent one of his spies
+to follow the adventurer, with orders to report any extraordinary
+happening&mdash;a necessary step to take, for the N'gombi, and especially the
+Inner N'gombi, are a secretive people, and news from local sources is
+hard to come by.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never be surprised to learn that a war has been going on in the
+N'gombi for two months without our hearing a word about it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>"If they fight amongst themselves&mdash;yes," said Captain Hamilton; "if they
+fight outsiders, there will be plenty of bleats. Why not send Bones to
+overlook his sugar experiments," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's talk about something pleasant," said Bones hastily.</p>
+
+<p>It was exactly three months later when he actually made the trip.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the <i>Zaire</i> up to the bend of the Isisi," said Sanders one
+morning, at breakfast, "and find out what Ali Kano is doing&mdash;the lazy
+beggar should have reported."</p>
+
+<p>"Any news from the N'gombi?" asked Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Only roundabout stories of their industry. Apparently the sugar
+merchant is making big experiments. He has set half the people digging
+roots for him. Be ready to sail at dawn."</p>
+
+<p>"Will it be a dangerous trip?" asked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Why?" smiled Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I'd like to go. Oh, please, don't look so glum! Bones is
+awfully good to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Better than a jolly old brother," murmured Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"H'm!" Sanders shook his head, and she appealed to her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Please!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't mind your going," said Hamilton, "if only to look after
+Bones."</p>
+
+<p>"S-sh!" said Bones reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>"If you're keen on it, I don't see why you shouldn't&mdash;if you had a
+chaperon."</p>
+
+<p>"A chaperon!" sneered Bones. "Great Heavens! Do, old skipper, pull
+yourself together. Open the jolly old window and give him air. Feelin'
+better, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"A chaperon! How absurd!" cried the girl indignantly. "I'm old enough to
+be Bones's mother! I'm nearly twenty&mdash;well, I'm older than Bones, and
+I'm ever so much more capable of looking after myself."</p>
+
+<p>The end of it was that she went, with her Kano maid and with the wife of
+Abiboo to cook for her. And in two days they came to the bend of the
+river, and Bones pursued his inquiries for the missing spy, but without
+success.</p>
+
+<p>"But this I tell you, lord," said the little chief who acted as
+Sanders's agent, "that there are strange things happening in the N'gombi
+country, for all the people have gone mad, and are digging up their
+teeth (tusks) and bringing them to a white man."</p>
+
+<p>"This shall go to Sandi," said Bones, realizing the importance of the
+news; and that same evening he turned the bow of the <i>Zaire</i> down
+stream.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>Thus said Wafa, the half-breed, for he was neither foreign Arab nor
+native N'gombi, yet combined the cunning of both&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Soon we shall see the puc-a-puc of Government <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>turn from the
+crookedness of the river, and I will go out and speak to our lord
+Tibbetti, who is a very simple man, and like a child."</p>
+
+<p>"O Wafa," said one of the group of armed men which stood shivering on
+the beach in the cold hours of dawn, "may this be a good palaver! As for
+me, my stomach is filled with fearfulness. Let us all drink this magic
+water, for it gives us men courage."</p>
+
+<p>"That you shall do when you have carried out all our master's works,"
+said Wafa, and added with confidence: "Have no fear, for soon you shall
+see great wonders."</p>
+
+<p>They heard the deep boom of the <i>Zaire's</i> siren signalling a solitary
+and venturesome fisherman to quit the narrow fair-way, and presently she
+came round the bend of the river, a dazzling white craft, showering
+sparks from her two slender smoke-stacks and leaving behind her twin
+cornucopias of grey smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Wafa stepped into a canoe, and, seeing that the others were preparing to
+follow him, he struck out swiftly, man&oelig;uvring his ironwood boat to
+the very waters from whence a scared fisherman was frantically paddling.</p>
+
+<p>"Go not there, foreigner," wailed the Isisi Stabber-of-Waters, "for it
+is our lord Sandi, and his puc-a-puc has bellowed terribly."</p>
+
+<p>"Die you!" roared Wafa. "On the river bottom your body, son of a fish
+and father of snakes!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>"O foreign frog!" came the shrill retort. "O poor man with two men's
+wives! O goatless&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Wafa was too intent upon his business to heed the rest. He struck the
+water strongly with his broad paddles, and reached the centre of the
+channel.</p>
+
+<p>Bones of the Houssas put up his hand and jerked the rope of the siren.</p>
+
+<p><i>Whoo-o-o&mdash;woo-o-op!</i></p>
+
+<p>"Bless his silly old head," said Bones fretfully, "the dashed fellow
+will be run down!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl was dusting Bones's cabin, and looked round. "What is it?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Bones made no reply. He gripped the telegraph handle and rung the
+engines astern as Yoka, the steersman, spun the wheel.</p>
+
+<p>Bump! Bump! Bumpity bump!</p>
+
+<p>The steamer slowed and stopped, and the girl came out to the bridge in
+alarm. The <i>Zaire</i> had struck a sandbank, and was stranded high, if not
+dry.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring that man on board," said the wrathful Bones. And they hauled to
+his presence Wafa, who was neither Arab nor N'gombi, but combined the
+vices of both.</p>
+
+<p>"O man," said Bones, glaring at the offender through his eyeglass, "what
+evil ju-ju sent you to stop my fine ship?" He spoke in the Isisi
+dialect, and was surprised to be answered in coast Arabic.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the man, unmoved by the wrath <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>of his overlord, "I come to
+make a great palaver concerning spirits and devils. Lord, I have found a
+great magic."</p>
+
+<p>Bones grinned, for he had that sense of humour which rises superior to
+all other emotions. "Then you shall try your magic, my man, and lift
+this ship to deep water."</p>
+
+<p>Wafa was not at all embarrassed. "Lord, this is a greater magic, for it
+concerns men, and brings to life the dead. For, lord, in this forest is
+a wonderful tree. Behold!"</p>
+
+<p>He took from his loose-rolled waistband a piece of wood. Bones took it
+in his hand. It was the size of a corn cob, and had been newly cut, so
+that the wood was moist with sap. Bones smelt it. There was a faint
+odour of resin and camphor. Patricia Hamilton smiled. It was so like
+Bones to be led astray by side issues.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the wonder, man, that you should drive my ship upon a
+sandbank! And who are these?" Bones pointed to six canoes, filled with
+men, approaching the <i>Zaire</i>. The man did not answer, but, taking the
+wood from Bones's hand, pulled a knife from his belt and whittled a
+shaving.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, lord," he said, "is my fine magic. With this wood I can do many
+miracles, such as making sick men strong and the strong weak."</p>
+
+<p>Bones heard the canoes bump against the side of the boat, but his mind
+was occupied with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>"Thus do I make my magic, Tibbetti," droned Wafa.</p>
+
+<p>He held the knife by the haft in the right hand, and the chip of wood in
+his left. The point of the knife was towards the white man's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!" screamed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Bones jumped aside and struck out as the man lunged. His nobbly fist
+caught Wafa under the jaw, and the man stumbled and fell. At the same
+instant there was a yell from the lower deck, the sound of scuffling,
+and a shot.</p>
+
+<p>Bones jumped for the girl, thrust her into the cabin, sliding the steel
+door behind him. His two revolvers hung at the head of his bunk, and he
+slipped them out, gave a glance to see whether they were loaded, and
+pushed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut the door after me," he breathed.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge deck was deserted, and Bones raced down the ladder to the
+iron deck. Two Houssas and half a dozen natives lay dead or dying. The
+remainder of the soldiers were fighting desperately with whatever
+weapons they found to their hands&mdash;for, with characteristic carefulness,
+they had laid their rifles away in oil, lest the river air rust
+them&mdash;and, save for the sentry, who used a rifle common to all, they
+were unarmed.</p>
+
+<p>"O dogs!" roared Bones.</p>
+
+<p>The invaders turned and faced the long-barrelled Webleys, and the fight
+was finished. Later, Wafa came to the bridge with bright steel manacles
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>on his wrist. His companions in the mad adventure sat on the iron deck
+below, roped leg to leg, and listened with philosophic calm as the
+Houssa sentry drew lurid pictures of the fate which awaited them.</p>
+
+<p>Bones sat in his deep chair, and the prisoner squatted before him. "You
+shall tell my lord Sandi why you did this wickedness," he said, "also,
+Wafa, what evil thought was in your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said Wafa cheerfully, "what good comes to me if I speak?"
+Something about the man's demeanour struck Bones as strange, and he rose
+and went close to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," he said, with a tightened lip. "The palaver is finished."</p>
+
+<p>They led the man away, and the girl, who had been a spectator, asked
+anxiously: "What is wrong, Bones?"</p>
+
+<p>But the young man shook his head. "The breaking of all that Sanders has
+worked for," he said bitterly, and the very absence of levity in one
+whose heart was so young and gay struck a colder chill to the girl's
+heart than the yells of the warring N'gombi. For Sanders had a big place
+in Patricia Hamilton's life. In an hour the <i>Zaire</i> was refloated, and
+was going at full speed down stream.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>Sanders held his court in the thatched palaver house between the Houssa
+guard-room and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>little stockade prison at the river's edge&mdash;a prison
+hidden amidst the flowering shrubs and acacia trees.</p>
+
+<p>Wafa was the first to be examined. "Lord," he said, without
+embarrassment, "I tell you this&mdash;that I will not speak of the great
+wonders which lay in my heart unless you give me a book<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> that I shall
+go free."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders smiled unpleasantly. "By the Prophet, I say what is true," he
+began confidentially; and Wafa winced at the oath, for he knew that
+truth was coming, and truth of a disturbing character. "In this land I
+govern millions of men," said Sanders, speaking deliberately, "I and two
+white lords. I govern by fear, Wafa, because there is no love in simple
+native men, save a love for their own and their bellies."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, you speak truth," said Wafa, the superior Arab of him responding
+to the confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you make to kill the lord Tibbetti," Sanders went on, "and do
+your wickedness for secret reasons, must I not discover what is that
+secret, lest it mean that I lose my hold upon the lands I govern?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, that is also true," said Wafa.</p>
+
+<p>"For what is one life more or less," asked Sanders, "a suffering smaller
+or greater by the side of my millions and their good?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, you are Suliman," said Wafa eagerly. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>"Therefore, if you let me
+go, who shall be the worse for it?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Sanders smiled, that grim parting of lip to show his white teeth.
+"Yet you may lie, and, if I let you go, I have neither the truth nor
+your body. No, Wafa, you shall speak." He rose up from his chair.
+"To-day you shall go to the Village of Irons," he said; "to-morrow I
+will come to you, and you shall answer my questions. And, if you will
+not speak, I shall light a little fire on your chest, and that fire
+shall not go out except when the breath goes from your body. This
+palaver is finished."</p>
+
+<p>So they took Wafa away to the Village of Irons, where the evil men of
+the Territories worked with chains about their ankles for their many
+sins, and in the morning came Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak, man," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Wafa stared with an effort of defiance, but his face was twitching, for
+he saw the soldiers driving pegs into the ground, preparatory to staking
+him out. "I will speak the truth," he said.</p>
+
+<p>So they took him into a hut, and there Sanders sat with him alone for
+half an hour; and when the Commissioner came out, his face was drawn and
+grey. He beckoned to Hamilton, who came forward and saluted. "We will
+get back to headquarters," he said shortly, and they arrived two hours
+later.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders sat in the little telegraph office, and the Morse sounder
+rattled and clacked for half an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>hour. Other sounders were at work
+elsewhere, delicate needles vacillated in cable offices, and an
+Under-Secretary was brought from the House of Commons to the bureau of
+the Prime Minister to answer a question.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock in the afternoon came the message Sanders expected:
+"London says permit for Corklan forged. Arrest. Take extremest steps.
+Deal drastically, ruthlessly. Holding in residence three companies
+African Rifles and mountain battery support you. Good luck.
+Administration."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders came out of the office, and Bones met him.</p>
+
+<p>"Men all aboard, sir," he reported.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go," said Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>He met the girl half-way to the quay. "I know it is something very
+serious," she said quietly; "you have all my thoughts." She put both her
+hands in his, and he took them. Then, without a word, he left her.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>Mr. P. T. Corklan sat before his new hut in the village of Fimini. In
+that hut&mdash;the greatest the N'gombi had ever seen&mdash;were stored hundreds
+of packages all well wrapped and sewn in native cloth.</p>
+
+<p>He was not smoking a cigar, because his stock of cigars was running
+short, but he was chewing a toothpick, for these, at a pinch, could be
+improvised. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>He called to his headman. "Wafa?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, he will come, for he is very cunning," said the headman.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Corklan grunted. He walked to the edge of the village, where the
+ground sloped down to a strip of vivid green rushes. "Tell me, how long
+will this river be full?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, for a moon."</p>
+
+<p>Corklan nodded. Whilst the secret river ran, there was escape for him,
+for its meandering course would bring him and his rich cargo to Spanish
+territory and deep water.</p>
+
+<p>His headman waited as though he had something to say. "Lord," he said at
+last, "the chief of the N'coro village sends this night ten great teeth
+and a pot."</p>
+
+<p>Corklan nodded. "If we're here, we'll get 'em. I hope we shall be gone."</p>
+
+<p>And then the tragically unexpected happened. A man in white came through
+the trees towards him, and behind was another white man and a platoon of
+native soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>"Trouble," said Corklan to himself, and thought the moment was one which
+called for a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, Mr. Sanders!" he said cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders eyed him in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"This is an unexpected pleasure," said Corklan.</p>
+
+<p>"Corklan, where is your still?" asked Sanders.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>The plump man laughed. "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said,
+"and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit&mdash;all proof,
+sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's
+method&mdash;in fact, as good as you could get it in England."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded. "I remember now&mdash;you're the man that ran the still in
+the Ashanti country, and got away with the concession."</p>
+
+<p>"That's me," said the other complacently. "P. T. Corklan&mdash;I never assume
+an alias."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded again. "I came past villages," he said, "where every man
+and almost every woman was drunk. I have seen villages wiped out in
+drunken fights. I have seen a year's hard work ahead of me. You have
+corrupted a province in a very short space of time, and, as far as I can
+judge, you hoped to steal a Government ship and get into neutral
+territory with the prize you have won by your&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Enterprise," said Mr. Corklan obligingly. "You'll have to prove
+that&mdash;about the ship. I am willing to stand any trial you like. There's
+no law about prohibition&mdash;it's one you've made yourself. I brought up
+the still&mdash;that's true&mdash;brought it up in sections and fitted it. I've
+been distilling spirits&mdash;that's true&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I also saw a faithful servant of Government, one Ali Kano," said
+Sanders, in a low voice. "He was lying on the bank of this secret river
+of yours with two revolver bullets in him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>"The nigger was spying on me, and I shot him," explained Corklan.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," said Sanders. And then, after a little pause: "Will you
+be hung or shot?"</p>
+
+<p>The cigar dropped from the man's mouth. "Hey?" he said hoarsely.
+"You&mdash;you can't&mdash;do that&mdash;for making a drop of liquor&mdash;for niggers!"</p>
+
+<p>"For murdering a servant of the State," corrected Sanders. "But, if it
+is any consolation to you, I will tell you that I would have killed you,
+anyway."</p>
+
+<p>It took Mr. Corklan an hour to make up his mind, and then he chose
+rifles.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the N'gombi point to a mound near the village of Fimini, which
+they call by a name which means, "The Waters of Madness," and it is
+believed to be haunted by devils.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>EYE TO EYE</h3>
+
+<p style="float: left; font-size: 100%; line-height: 80%; margin-top: 0;">"</p><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">B</span>ones,"
+said Captain Hamilton, in despair, "you will never be a
+Napoleon."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old sir and brother-officer," said Lieutenant Tibbetts, "you are a
+jolly old pessimist."</p>
+
+<p>Bones was by way of being examined in subjects C and D, for promotion to
+captaincy, and Hamilton was the examining officer. By all the rules and
+laws and strict regulations which govern military examinations, Bones
+had not only failed, but he had seriously jeopardized his right to his
+lieutenancy, if every man had his due.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, let me put this," said Hamilton. "Suppose you were in charge of a
+company of men, and you were attacked on three sides, and you had a
+river behind you on the fourth side, and you found things were going
+very hard against you. What would you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old sir," said Bones thoughtfully, and screwing his face into all
+manner of contortions in his effort to secure the right answer, "I
+should go and wet my heated brow in the purling brook, then I'd take
+counsel with myself."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>"You'd lose," said Hamilton, with a groan. "That's the last person in
+the world you should go to for advice, Bones. Suppose," he said, in a
+last desperate effort to awaken a gleam of military intelligence in his
+subordinate's mind, "suppose you were trekking through the forest with a
+hundred rifles, and you found your way barred by a thousand armed men.
+What would you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go back," said Bones, "and jolly quick, dear old fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Go back? What would you go back for?" asked the other, in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"To make my will," said Bones firmly, "and to write a few letters to
+dear old friends in the far homeland. I have friends, Ham," he said,
+with dignity, "jolly old people who listen for my footsteps, and to whom
+my voice is music, dear old fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"What other illusions do they suffer from?" asked Hamilton offensively,
+closing his book with a bang. "Well, you will be sorry to learn that I
+shall not recommend you for promotion."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean that," said Bones hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that," said Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I thought if I had a pal to examine me, I would go through with
+flying colours."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am not a pal. You don't suggest," said Hamilton, with ominous
+dignity, "that I would defraud the public by lying as to the qualities
+of a deficient character?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do," said Bones, nodding vigorously, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>"for my sake and for the
+sake of the child." The child was that small native whom Bones had
+rescued and adopted.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even for the sake of the child," said Hamilton, with an air of
+finality. "Bones, you're ploughed."</p>
+
+<p>Bones did not speak, and Hamilton gathered together the papers, forms,
+and paraphernalia of examination.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his head suddenly, to discover that Bones was staring at him.
+It was no ordinary stare, but something that was a little uncanny. "What
+the dickens are you looking at?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones did not speak. His round eyes were fixed on his superior in an
+unwinking glare.</p>
+
+<p>"When I said you had failed," said Hamilton kindly, "I meant, of
+course&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That I'd passed," muttered Bones excitedly. "Say it, Ham&mdash;say it!
+'Bones, congratulations, dear old lad'&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I meant," said Hamilton coldly, "that you have another chance next
+month."</p>
+
+<p>The face of Lieutenant Tibbetts twisted into a painful contortion. "It
+didn't work!" he said bitterly, and stalked from the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Rum beggar!" thought Hamilton, and smiled to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you noticed anything strange about Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton
+the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Her brother looked at her over his newspaper. "The strangest thing about
+Bones is Bones," he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>said, "and that I am compelled to notice every day
+of my life."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at Sanders, who was idly pacing the stoep of the
+Residency. "Have you, Mr. Sanders?"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders paused. "Beyond the fact that he is rather preoccupied and
+stares at one&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That is it," said the girl. "I knew I was right&mdash;he stares horribly. He
+has been doing it for a week&mdash;just staring. Do you think he is ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has been moping in his hut for the past week," said Hamilton
+thoughtfully, "but I was hoping that it meant that he was swotting for
+his exam. But staring&mdash;I seem to remember&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The subject of the discussion made his appearance at the far end of the
+square at that moment, and they watched him. First he walked slowly
+towards the Houssa sentry, who shouldered his arms in salute. Bones
+halted before the soldier and stared at him. Somehow, the watchers on
+the stoep knew that he was staring&mdash;there was something so fixed, so
+tense in his attitude. Then, without warning, the sentry's hand passed
+across his body, and the rifle came down to the "present."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth is he doing?" demanded the outraged Hamilton, for
+sentries do not present arms to subaltern officers.</p>
+
+<p>Bones passed on. He stopped before one of the huts in the married lines,
+and stared at the wife of Sergeant Abiboo. He stared long and earnestly,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>and the woman, giggling uncomfortably, stared back. Then she began to
+dance.</p>
+
+<p>"For Heaven's sake&mdash;&mdash;" gasped Sanders, as Bones passed on.</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!" roared Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>Bones turned first his head, then his body towards the Residency, and
+made his slow way towards the group.</p>
+
+<p>"What is happening?" asked Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>The face of Bones was flushed; there was triumph in his eye&mdash;triumph
+which his pose of nonchalance could not wholly conceal. "What is
+happening, dear old officer?" he asked innocently, and stared.</p>
+
+<p>"What the dickens are you goggling at?" demanded Hamilton irritably.
+"And please explain why you told the sentry to present arms to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't tell him, dear old sir and superior captain," said Bones. His
+eyes never left Hamilton's; he stared with a fierceness and with an
+intensity that was little short of ferocious.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound you, what are you staring at? Aren't you well?" demanded
+Hamilton wrathfully.</p>
+
+<p>Bones blinked. "Quite well, sir and comrade," he said gravely. "Pardon
+the question&mdash;did you feel a curious and unaccountable inclination to
+raise your right hand and salute me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I&mdash;what?" demanded his dumbfounded superior.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>"A sort of itching of the right arm&mdash;an almost overpowerin' inclination
+to touch your hat to poor old Bones?"</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton drew a long breath. "I felt an almost overpowering desire to
+lift my foot," he said significantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at me again," said Bones calmly. "Fix your eyes on mine an' think
+of nothin'. Now shut your eyes. Now you can't open 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I can open them," said Hamilton. "Have you been drinking,
+Bones?"</p>
+
+<p>A burst of delighted laughter from the girl checked Bones's indignant
+denial. "I know!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Bones is trying to
+mesmerize you!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>The scarlet face of Bones betrayed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Power of the human eye, dear old sir," he said hurriedly. "Some people
+have it&mdash;it's a gift. I discovered it the other day after readin' an
+article in <i>The Scientific Healer</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Phew!" Hamilton whistled. "So," he said, with dangerous calm, "all this
+staring and gaping of yours means that, does it? I remember now. When I
+was examining you for promotion the other day, you stared. Trying to
+mesmerize me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let bygones be bygones, dear old friend," begged Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"And when I asked you to produce the company pay-sheets, which you
+forgot to bring up to date, you stared at me!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>"It's a gift," said Bones feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bones," said the girl slowly, "you stared at me, too, after I
+refused to go picnicking with you on the beach."</p>
+
+<p>"All's fair in love an' war," said Bones vaguely. "It's a wonderful
+gift."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever mesmerized anybody?" asked Hamilton curiously, and Bones
+brightened up.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather, dear old sir," he said. "Jolly old Ali, my secretary&mdash;goes off
+in a regular trance on the slightest provocation. Fact, dear old Ham."</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton clapped his hands, and his orderly, dozing in the shade of the
+verandah, rose up. "Go, bring Ali Abid," said Hamilton. And when the man
+had gone: "Are you under the illusion that you made the sentry present
+arms to you, and Abiboo's woman dance for you, by the magic of your
+eye?"</p>
+
+<p>"You saw," said the complacent Bones. "It's a wonderful gift, dear old
+Ham. As soon as I read the article, I tried it on Ali. Got him, first
+pop!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl was bubbling with suppressed laughter, and there was a twinkle
+in Sanders's eye. "I recall that you saw me in connection with shooting
+leave in the N'gombi."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir and Excellency," said the miserable Bones.</p>
+
+<p>"And I said that I thought it inadvisable, because of the trouble in the
+bend of the Isisi River."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>"Yes, Excellency and sir," agreed Bones dolefully.</p>
+
+<p>"And then you stared."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I, dear old&mdash;Did I, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>His embarrassment was relieved by the arrival of Ali. So buoyant a soul
+had Bones, that from the deeps of despair into which he was beginning to
+sink he rose to heights of confidence, not to say self-assurance, that
+were positively staggering.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Patricia, ladies and gentlemen," said Bones briskly, "we have here
+Ali Abid, confidential servant and faithful retainer. I will now
+endeavour to demonstrate the power of the human eye."</p>
+
+<p>He met the stolid gaze of Ali and stared. He stared terribly and
+alarmingly, and Ali, to do him justice, stared back.</p>
+
+<p>"Close your eyes," commanded Bones. "You can't open them, can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said Ali, "optics of subject are hermetically sealed."</p>
+
+<p>"I will now put him in a trance," said Bones, and waved his hand
+mysteriously. Ali rocked backward and forward, and would have fallen but
+for the supporting arm of the demonstrator. "He is now insensible to
+pain," said Bones proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Lend me your hatpin, Pat," said Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"I will now awaken him," said Bones hastily, and snapped his fingers.
+Ali rose to his feet with great dignity. "Thank you, Ali; you may go,"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>said his master, and turned, ready to receive the congratulations of
+the party.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you seriously believe that you mesmerized that humbug?"</p>
+
+<p>Bones drew himself erect. "Sir and captain," he said stiffly, "do you
+suggest I am a jolly old impostor? You saw the sentry, sir, you saw the
+woman, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And I saw Ali," said Hamilton, nodding, "and I'll bet he gave the
+sentry something and the woman something to play the goat for you."</p>
+
+<p>Bones bowed slightly and distantly. "I cannot discuss my powers, dear
+old sir; you realize that there are some subjects too delicate to broach
+except with kindred spirits. I shall continue my studies of psychic
+mysteries undeterred by the cold breath of scepticism." He saluted
+everybody, and departed with chin up and shoulders squared, a picture of
+offended dignity.</p>
+
+<p>That night Sanders lay in bed, snuggled up on his right side, which
+meant that he had arrived at the third stage of comfort which precedes
+that fading away of material life which men call sleep. Half consciously
+he listened to the drip, drip, drip of rain on the stoep, and promised
+himself that he would call upon Abiboo in the morning, to explain the
+matter of a choked gutter, for Abiboo had sworn, by the Prophet and
+certain minor relatives of the Great One, that he had cleared every
+bird's nest from the ducts about the Residency.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip!</p>
+
+<p>Sanders sank with luxurious leisure into the nothingness of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Drip-tap, drip-tap, drip-tap!</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes slowly, slid one leg out of bed, and groped for his
+slippers. He slipped into the silken dressing-gown which had been flung
+over the end of the bed, corded it about him, and switched on the
+electric light. Then he passed out into the big common room, with its
+chairs drawn together in overnight comradeship, and the solemn tick of
+the big clock to emphasize the desolation. He paused a second to switch
+on the lights, then went to the door and flung it open.</p>
+
+<p>"Enter!" he said in Arabic.</p>
+
+<p>The man who came in was naked, save for a tarboosh on his head and a
+loin-cloth about his middle. His slim body shone with moisture, and
+where he stood on the white matting were two little pools. Kano from his
+brown feet to the soaked fez, he stood erect with that curious
+assumption of pride and equality which the Mussulman bears with less
+offence to his superiors than any other race.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace on this house," he said, raising his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak, Ahmet," said Sanders, dropping into a big chair and stretching
+back, with his clasped hands behind his head. He eyed the man gravely
+and without resentment, for no spy would tap <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>upon his window at night
+save that the business was a bad one.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the man, "it is shameful that I should wake your lordship
+from your beautiful dream, but I came with the river."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> He looked down
+at his master, and in the way of certain Kano people, who are
+dialecticians to a man, he asked: "Lord, it is written in the Sura of
+Ya-Sin, 'To the sun it is not given to overtake the moon&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"'Nor doth the night outstrip the day; but each in his own sphere doth
+journey on,'" finished Sanders patiently. "Thus also begins the Sura of
+the Cave: 'Praise be to God, Who hath sent down the book to his servant,
+and hath put no crookedness into it.' Therefore, Ahmet, be plain to me,
+and leave your good speeches till you meet the abominable Sufi."</p>
+
+<p>The man sank to his haunches. "Lord," he said, "from the bend of the
+river, where the Isisi divides the land of the N'gombi from the lands of
+the Good Chief, I came, travelling by day and night with the river, for
+many strange things have happened which are too wonderful for me. This
+Chief Busesi, whom all men call good, has a daughter by his second wife.
+In the year of the High Crops she was given to a stranger from the
+forest, him they call Gufuri-Bululu, and he took her away to live in his
+hut."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders sat up. "Go on, man," he said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>"Lord, she has returned and performs wonderful magic," said the man,
+"for by the wonder of her eyes she can make dead men live and live men
+die, and all people are afraid. Also, lord, there was a wise man in the
+forest, who was blind, and he had a daughter who was the prop and staff
+of him, and because of his wisdom, and because she hated all who
+rivalled her, the woman D'rona Gufuri told certain men to seize the girl
+and hold her in a deep pool of water until she was dead."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a bad palaver," said Sanders; "but you shall tell me what you
+mean by the wonder of her eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the man, "she looks upon men, and they do her will. Now, it
+is her will that there shall be a great dance on the Rind of the Moon,
+and after she shall send the spears of the people of Busesi&mdash;who is old
+and silly, and for this reason is called good&mdash;against the N'gombi
+folk."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Sanders, biting his lip in thought, "by the wonder of her
+eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the man, "even I have seen this, for she has stricken men
+to the ground by looking at them, and some she has made mad, and others
+foolish."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders turned his head at a noise from the doorway. The tall figure of
+Hamilton stood peering sleepily at the light.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard your voice," he said apologetically. "What is the trouble?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>Briefly Sanders related the story the man had told.</p>
+
+<p>"Wow!" said Hamilton, in a paroxysm of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"What's wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bones!" shouted Hamilton. "Bones is the fellow. Let him go up and
+subdue her with his eye. He's the very fellow. I'll go over and call
+him, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He hustled into his clothing, slipped on a mackintosh, and, making his
+way across the dark square, admitted himself to the sleeping-hut of
+Lieutenant Tibbetts. By the light of his electric torch he discovered
+the slumberer. Bones lay on his back, his large mouth wide open, one
+thin leg thrust out from the covers, and he was making strange noises.
+Hamilton found the lamp and lit it, then he proceeded to the
+heart-breaking task of waking his subordinate. "Up, you lazy devil!" he
+shouted, shaking Bones by the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Bones opened his eyes and blinked rapidly. "On the word 'One!'" he said
+hoarsely, "carry the left foot ten inches to the left front, at the same
+time bringing the rifle to a horizontal position at the right side.
+One!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wake up, wake up, Bones!"</p>
+
+<p>Bones made a wailing noise. It was the noise of a mother panther who has
+returned to her lair to discover that her offspring have been eaten by
+wild pigs. "Whar-r-ow-ow!" he said, and turned over on his right side.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>Hamilton pocketed his torch, and, lifting Bones bodily from the bed, let
+him fall with a thud.</p>
+
+<p>Bones scrambled up, staring. "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "I stand
+before you a ruined man. Drink has been my downfall, as the dear old
+judge remarked. I <i>did</i> kill Wilfred Morgan, and I plead the unwritten
+law." He saluted stiffly, collapsed on to his pillow, and fell instantly
+into a deep child-like sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton groaned. He had had occasion to wake Bones from his beauty
+sleep before, but he had never been as bad as this. He took a soda
+siphon from the little sideboard and depressed the lever, holding the
+outlet above his victim's head.</p>
+
+<p>Bones leapt up with a roar. "Hello, Ham!" he said quite sanely. "Well
+dear old officer, this is the finish! You stand by the lifeboat an'
+shoot down anybody who attempts to leave the ship before the torpedoes
+are saved. I'm goin' down into the hold to have a look at the women an'
+children." He saluted, and was stepping out into the wet night, when
+Hamilton caught his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady, the Buffs, my sleeping beauty! Dress yourself. Sanders wants
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Bones nodded. "I'll just drive over and see him," he said, climbed back
+into bed, and was asleep in a second.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton put out the light and went back to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>Residency. "I hadn't
+the heart to cut his ear off," he said regretfully. "I'm afraid we
+shan't be able to consult Bones till the morning."</p>
+
+<p>Sanders nodded. "Anyway, I will wait for the morning. I have told Abiboo
+to get stores and wood aboard, and to have steam in the <i>Zaire</i>. Let us
+emulate Bones."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven forbid!" said Hamilton piously.</p>
+
+<p>Bones came blithely to breakfast, a dapper and a perfectly groomed
+figure. He received the news of the ominous happenings in the N'gombi
+country with that air of profound solemnity which so annoyed Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had called me in the night," he said gravely. "Dear old
+officer, I think it was due to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Called you! Called you! Why&mdash;why&mdash;&mdash;" spluttered Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"In fact, we did call you Bones, but we could not wake you," smoothed
+Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>A look of amazement spread over the youthful face of Lieutenant
+Tibbetts. "You called me?" he asked incredulously. "Called <i>me</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You!</i>" hissed Hamilton. "I not only called you, but I kicked you.
+I poured water on you, and I chucked you up to the roof of the hut and
+dropped you."</p>
+
+<p>A faint but unbelieving smile from Bones. "Are you sure it was me,
+dear old officer?" he asked, and Hamilton choked. "I only ask," said
+Bones, turning blandly to the girl, "because I'm <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>a notoriously light
+sleeper, dear old Miss Patricia. The slightest stir wakes me, and
+instantly I'm in possession of all my faculties. Bosambo calls me
+'Eye-That-Never-Shuts&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Bosambo is a notorious leg-puller," interrupted Hamilton irritably.
+"Really, Bones&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Often, dear old Sister," Bones went on impressively, "campin' out in
+the forest, an' sunk in the profound sleep which youth an' a good
+conscience brings, something has wakened me, an' I've jumped to my feet,
+a revolver in my hand, an' what do you think it was?"</p>
+
+<p>"A herd of wild elephants walking on your chest?" suggested Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think it was, dear old Patricia miss?" persisted Bones, and
+interrupted her ingenious speculation in his usual aggravating manner:
+"The sound of a footstep breakin' a twig a hundred yards away!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful!" sneered Hamilton, stirring his coffee. "Bones, if you could
+only spell, what a novelist you'd be!"</p>
+
+<p>"The point is," said Sanders, with good-humoured patience, which
+brought, for some curious reason, a warm sense of intimacy to the girl,
+"you've got to go up and try your eye on the woman D'rona Gufuri."</p>
+
+<p>Bones leant back in his chair and spoke with deliberation and
+importance, for he realized that he, and only he, could supply a
+solution to the difficulties of his superiors.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>"The power of the human eye, when applied by a jolly old scientist to a
+heathen, is irresistible. You may expect me down with the prisoner in
+four days."</p>
+
+<p>"She may be more trouble than you expect," said Sanders seriously. "The
+longer one lives in native lands, the less confident can one be. There
+have been remarkable cases of men possessing the power which this woman
+has&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And which I have, sir an' Excellency, to an extraordinary extent,"
+interrupted Bones firmly. "Have no fear."</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>Thirty-six hours later Bones stood before the woman D'rona Gufuri.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the woman, "men speak evilly of me to Sandi, and now you
+have come to take me to the Village of Irons."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true, D'rona," said Bones, and looked into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said the woman, speaking slowly, "you shall go back to Sandi and
+say, 'I have not seen the woman D'rona'&mdash;for, lord, is this not truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'wa! I'wa!" muttered Bones thickly.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot see me Tibbetti, and I am not here," said the woman, and she
+spoke before the assembled villagers, who stood, knuckles to teeth,
+gazing awe-stricken upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot see you," said Bones sleepily.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you cannot hear me, lord?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>Bones did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>The woman took him by the arm and led him through the patch of wood
+which fringes the river and separates beach from village. None followed
+them; even the two Houssas who formed the escort of Lieutenant Tibbetts
+stayed rooted to the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Bones passed into the shadow of the trees, the woman's hand on his arm.
+Then suddenly from the undergrowth rose a lank figure, and D'rona of the
+Magic Eye felt a bony hand at her throat. She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"O man, whoever you be, look upon me in this light, and your strength
+shall melt."</p>
+
+<p>She twisted round to meet her assailant's face, and shrieked aloud, for
+he was blind. And Bones stood by without moving, without seeing or
+hearing, whilst the strong hands of the blind witch-doctor, whose
+daughter she had slain, crushed the life from her body.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>"Of course, sir," explained Bones, "you may think she mesmerized me. On
+the other hand, it is quite possible that she acted under my influence.
+It's a moot point, sir an' Excellency&mdash;jolly moot!"</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HOODED KING</h3>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:40px;line-height:25px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span>here
+was a certain Portuguese governor&mdash;this was in the days when
+Colhemos was Colonial Minister&mdash;who had a small legitimate income and an
+extravagant wife. This good lady had a villa at Cintra, a box at the
+Real Theatre de S&atilde;o Carlos, and a motor-car, and gave five o'clocks at
+the Hotel Nunes to the aristocracy and gentry who inhabited that spot,
+of whom the ecstatic Spaniard said, "dejar a Cintra, y ver al mundo
+entero, es, con verdad caminar en capuchera."</p>
+
+<p>Since her husband's salary was exactly $66.50 weekly and the upkeep of
+the villa alone was twice that amount, it is not difficult to understand
+that Senhor Bonaventura was a remarkable man.</p>
+
+<p>Colhemos came over to the Foreign Office in the Praco de Commercio one
+day and saw Dr. Sarabesta, and Sarabesta, who was both a republican and
+a sinner, was also ambitious, or he had a Plan and an Ideal&mdash;two very
+dangerous possessions for a politician, since they lead inevitably to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>change, than which nothing is more fatal to political systems.</p>
+
+<p>"Colhemos," said the doctor dramatically, "you are ruining me! You are
+bringing me to the dust and covering me with the hatred and mistrust of
+the Powers!"</p>
+
+<p>He folded his arms and rose starkly from the chair, his beard all
+a-bristle, his deep little eyes glaring.</p>
+
+<p>"What is wrong, Baptisa?" asked Colhemos.</p>
+
+<p>The other flung out his arms in an extravagant gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Ruin!" he cried somewhat inadequately.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the leather portfolio which lay on the table and extracted six
+sheets of foolscap paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Read!" he said, and subsided into his padded armchair a picture of
+gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The sheets of foolscap were surmounted by crests showing an emaciated
+lion and a small horse with a spiral horn in his forehead endeavouring
+to climb a chafing-dish which had been placed on edge for the purpose,
+and was suitably inscribed with another lion, two groups of leopards and
+a harp.</p>
+
+<p>Colhemos did not stop to admire the menagerie, but proceeded at once to
+the literature. It was in French, and had to do with a certain condition
+of affairs in Portuguese Central Africa which "constituted a grave and
+increasing menace to the native subjects" of "Grande Bretagne." <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>There
+were hints, "which His Majesty's Government would be sorry to believe,
+of raids and requisitions upon the native manhood" of this country which
+differed little from slave raids.</p>
+
+<p>Further, "Mr. Commissioner Sanders of the Territories regretted to
+learn" that these labour requisitions resulted in a condition of affairs
+not far removed from slavery.</p>
+
+<p>Colhemos read through the dispatch from start to finish, and put it down
+thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Pinto has been overdoing it," he admitted. "I shall have to write to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"What you write to Pinto may be interesting enough to print," said Dr.
+Sarabesta violently, "but what shall I write to London? This
+Commissioner Sanders is a fairly reliable man, and his Government will
+act upon what he says."</p>
+
+<p>Colhemos, who was really a great man (it was a distinct loss when he
+faced a firing platoon in the revolutionary days of '12), tapped his
+nose with a penholder.</p>
+
+<p>"You can say that we shall send a special commissioner to the M'fusi
+country to report, and that he will remain permanently established in
+the M'fusi to suppress lawless acts."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked up wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Pinto won't like that," said he, "besides which, the M'fusi are quite
+unmanageable. The last time we tried to bring them to reason it
+cost&mdash;Santa Maria!... and the lives!... phew!"</p>
+
+<p>Colhemos nodded.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>"The duc de Sagosta," he said slowly, "is an enthusiastic young man. He
+is also a royalist and allied by family ties to Dr. Ceillo of the Left.
+He is, moreover, an Anglomaniac&mdash;though why he should be so when his
+mother was an American woman I do not know. He shall be our
+commissioner, my dear Baptisa."</p>
+
+<p>His dear Baptisa sat bolt upright, every hair in his bristling head
+erect.</p>
+
+<p>"A royalist!" he gasped, "do you want to set Portugal ablaze?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are moments when I could answer 'Yes' to that question," said the
+truthful Colhemos "but for the moment I am satisfied that there will be
+no fireworks. It will do no harm to send the boy. It will placate the
+Left and please the Clerics&mdash;it will also consolidate our reputation for
+liberality and largeness of mind. Also the young man will either be
+killed or fall a victim to the sinister influences of that corruption
+which, alas, has so entered into the vitals of our Colonial service."</p>
+
+<p>So Manuel duc de Sagosta was summoned, and prepared for the subject of
+his visit by telephone, came racing up from Cintra in his big American
+juggernaut, leapt up the stairs of the Colonial Office two at a time,
+and came to Colhemos' presence in a state of mind which may be described
+as a big mental whoop.</p>
+
+<p>"You will understand, Senhor," said Colhemos, "that I am doing that
+which may make me unpopular. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>For that I care nothing! My country is my
+first thought, and the glory and honour of our flag! Some day you may
+hold my portfolio in the Cabinet, and it will be well if you bring to
+your high and noble office the experience...."</p>
+
+<p>Then they all talked together, and the dark room flickered with
+gesticulating palms.</p>
+
+<p>Colhemos came to see the boy off by the M.N.P. boat which carried him to
+the African Coast.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose, Senhor," said the duc, "there would be no objection on the
+part of the Government to my calling on my way at a certain British
+port. I have a friend in the English army&mdash;we were at Clifton
+together&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Colhemos, pressing the young man's hand warmly, "you
+must look upon England as a potential ally, and lose no opportunity
+which offers to impress upon our dear colleagues this fact, that behind
+England, unmoved, unshaken, faithful, stands the armed might of
+Portugal. May the saints have you in their keeping!"</p>
+
+<p>He embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks.</p>
+
+<hr class='medium' />
+
+<p>Bones was drilling recruits at headquarters when Hamilton hailed him
+from the edge of the square.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a pal of yours come to see you, Bones," he roared.</p>
+
+<p>Bones marched sedately to his superior and touched his helmet.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>"A friend of yours&mdash;just landed from the Portuguese packet."</p>
+
+<p>Bones was mystified, and went up to the Residency to find a young man in
+spotless white being entertained by Patricia Hamilton and a very
+thoughtful Sanders.</p>
+
+<p>The duc de Sagosta leapt to his feet as Bones came up the verandah.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Conk!" he yelled hilariously.</p>
+
+<p>Bones stared.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless my life," he stammered, "it's Mug!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a terrific hand-shaking accompanied by squawking inquiries
+which were never answered, uproarious laughter, back patting, brazen and
+baseless charges that each was growing fat, and Sanders watched it with
+great kindness.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's old Ham," said Bones, "you ought to know Ham&mdash;Captain Hamilton,
+sir, my friend, the duke of something or other&mdash;but you can call him
+Mug&mdash;Miss Hamilton&mdash;this is Mug."</p>
+
+<p>"We've already been introduced," she laughed. "But why do you let him
+call you Mug?"</p>
+
+<p>The duc grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"I like Mug," he said simply.</p>
+
+<p>He was to stay to lunch, for the ship was not leaving until the
+afternoon, and Bones carried him off to his hut.</p>
+
+<p>"A joyous pair," said Hamilton enviously. "Lord, if I was only a boy
+again!"</p>
+
+<p>Sanders shook his head.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>"You don't echo that wish?" said Pat.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't thinking about that&mdash;I was thinking of the boy. I dislike this
+M'fusi business, and I can't think why the Government sent him. They are
+a pretty bad lot&mdash;their territory is at the back of the Akasava, and the
+Chief of the M'fusi is a rascal."</p>
+
+<p>"But he says that he has been sent to reform them," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Sanders smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a job I should care to undertake&mdash;and yet&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He knitted his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could reform them&mdash;Bones could reform them. But if they were reformed
+it would break Bonaventura, for he holds his job subject to their
+infamy."</p>
+
+<p>At lunch Sanders was unusually silent, a silence which was unnoticed,
+save by the girl. Bones and his friend, however, needed no stimulation.
+Lunch was an almost deafening meal, and when the time came for the duc
+to leave, the whole party went down to the beach to see him embark.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, old Mug!" roared Bones, as the boat pulled away. "Whoop! hi!
+how!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're a noisy devil," said Hamilton, admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Vox populi, vox Dei," said Bones.</p>
+
+<p>He had an unexpected visitor that evening, for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>whilst he was dressing
+for dinner, Sanders came into his hut&mdash;an unusual happening.</p>
+
+<p>What Sanders had to say may not be related since it was quite
+unofficial, but Bones came to dinner that night and behaved with such
+decorum and preserved a mien so grave, that Hamilton thought he was ill.</p>
+
+<p>The duc continued his journey down the African Coast and presently came
+to a port which was little more than a beach, a jetty, a big white
+house, and by far the most imposing end of the Moanda road. In due time,
+he arrived by the worst track in the world (he was six days on the
+journey) at Moanda itself, and came into the presence of the Governor.</p>
+
+<p>Did the duc but know it, his Excellency had also been prepared for the
+young man's mission. The mail had arrived by carrier the day before the
+duc put in his appearance, and Pinto Bonaventura had his little piece
+all ready to say.</p>
+
+<p>"I will give you all the assistance I possibly can," he said, as they
+sat at <i>d&eacute;jeuner</i>, "but, naturally, I cannot guarantee you immunity."</p>
+
+<p>"Immunity?" said the puzzled duc.</p>
+
+<p>Senhor Bonaventura nodded gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is more repugnant to me than slavery," he said, "unless it be
+the terrible habit of drinking. If I could sweep these evils out of
+existence with a wave of my hand, believe me I would do so; but I cannot
+perform miracles, and the Government will not give me sufficient <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>troops
+to suppress these practices which every one of us hold in abhorrence."</p>
+
+<p>"But," protested the duc, a little alarmed, "since I am going to reform
+the M'fusi...."</p>
+
+<p>The Governor choked over his coffee and apologized. He did not laugh,
+because long residence in Central Africa had got him out of the habit,
+and had taught him a certain amount of self-control in all things except
+the consumption of marsala.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray go on," he said, wearing an impassive face.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be to the interests of Portugal, no less than to your
+Excellency's interest," said the young man, leaning across the table and
+speaking with great earnestness, "if I can secure a condition of peace,
+prosperity, sobriety, and if I can establish the Portuguese law in this
+disturbed area."</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly," acknowledged the older man with profound seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>So far from the duc's statement representing anything near the truth, it
+may be said that a restoration of order would serve his Excellency very
+badly indeed. In point of fact he received something like eight
+shillings for every "head" of "recruited labour." He also received a
+commission from the same interested syndicates which exported
+able-bodied labourers, a commission amounting to six shillings upon
+every case of square-face, and a larger sum upon every keg of rum that
+came into the country.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>Sobriety and law would, in fact, spell much discomfort to the elegant
+lady who lived in the villa at Cintra, and would considerably diminish
+not only Senhor Bonaventura's handsome balance at the Bank of Brazil,
+but would impoverish certain ministers, permanent and temporary, who
+looked to their dear Pinto for periodical contributions to what was
+humorously described as "The Party Fund."</p>
+
+<p>Yet the duc de Sagosta went into the wilds with a high heart and a
+complete faith, in his youthful and credulous soul, that he had behind
+him the full moral and physical support of a high-minded and patriotic
+Governor. The high-minded and patriotic Governor, watching the caravan
+of his new assistant disappearing through the woods which fringe Moanda,
+expressed in picturesque language his fervent hope that the mud, the
+swamp, the forest and the wilderness of the M'fusi country would swallow
+up this young man for evermore, amen. The unpopularity of the new
+Commissioner was sealed when the Governor learnt of his visit to
+Sanders, for "Sanders" was a name at which his Excellency made
+disapproving noises.</p>
+
+<p>The predecessor of the duc de Sagosta was dead. His grave was in the
+duc's front garden, and was covered with rank grass. The new-comer found
+the office correspondence in order (as a glib native clerk
+demonstrated); he also found 103 empty bottles behind the house, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>understood the meaning of that coarse grave in the garden. He found
+that the last index number in the letter-book was 951.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that the man he succeeded should have found, in one
+year, 951 subjects for correspondence, but it is the fact. Possibly nine
+hundred of the letters had to do with the terrible state of the
+Residency at Uango-Bozeri. The roof leaked, the foundations had settled,
+and not a door closed as it should close. On the day of his arrival the
+duc found a <i>mamba</i> resting luxuriously in his one armchair, a discovery
+which suggested the existence of a whole colony of these deadly
+brutes&mdash;the <i>mamba</i> bite is fatal in exactly ninety seconds&mdash;under or
+near the house.</p>
+
+<p>The other fifty dispatches probably had to do with the late
+Commissioner's arrears of pay, for Portugal at that time was in the
+throes of her annual crisis, and ministries were passing through the
+Government offices at Lisbon with such rapidity that before a cheque
+could be carried from the Foreign Office to the bank, it was out of
+date.</p>
+
+<p>Uango Bozeri is 220 miles by road from the coast, and is the centre of
+the child-like people of the M'fusi. Here the duc dwelt and had his
+being, as Governor of 2,000 square miles, and overlord of some million
+people who were cannibals with a passion for a fiery liquid which was
+described by traders as "rum." It was as near rum <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>as the White City is
+to Heaven; that is to say, to the uncultivated taste it might have been
+rum, and anyway was as near to rum as the taster could expect to get.</p>
+
+<p>This is all there is to be said about the duc de Sagosta, save that his
+headman swindled him, his soldiers were conscienceless natives
+committing acts of brigandage in his innocent name, whilst his chief at
+Moanda was a peculating and incompetent scoundrel.</p>
+
+<p>At the time when the duc was finding life a bitter and humiliating
+experience, and had reached the stage when he sat on his predecessor's
+grave for company, a small and unauthorized party crossed the frontier
+from the British Territories in search of adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Now it happened that the particular region through which the border-line
+passed was governed by the Chief of the Greater M'fusi, who was a
+cannibal, a drunkard, and a master of two regiments.</p>
+
+<p>The duc had been advised not to interfere with the chief of his people,
+and he had (after one abortive and painful experience) obeyed his
+superiors, accepting the hut tax which was sent to him (and which was
+obviously and insolently inadequate) without demur.</p>
+
+<p>No white man journeyed to the city of the M'fusi without invitation from
+the chief, and as Chief Karata never issued such invitation, the Greater
+M'fusi was a <i>terra incognita</i> even to his Excellency <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>the
+Governor-General of the Central and Western Provinces.</p>
+
+<p>Karata was a drunkard approaching lunacy. It was his whim for weeks on
+end to wear on his head the mask of a goat. At other times, "as a mark
+of his confidence in devils," he would appear hidden beneath a plaited
+straw extinguisher which fitted him from head to foot. He was eccentric
+in other ways which need not be particularized, but he was never so
+eccentric that he welcomed strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately for those concerned, the high road from the Territories
+passed through the M'fusi drift. And one day there came a panting
+messenger from the keeper of the drift who flung himself down at the
+king's feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord," said he, "there is a white man at the drift, and with him a
+certain chief and his men."</p>
+
+<p>"You will take the men, bringing them to me tied with ropes," said the
+king, who looked at the messenger with glassy eyes and found some
+difficulty in speaking, for he was at the truculent stage of his second
+bottle.</p>
+
+<p>The messenger returned and met the party on the road. What was his
+attitude towards the intruders it is impossible to say. He may have been
+insolent, secure in the feeling that he was representing his master's
+attitude towards white men; he may have offered fight in the illusion
+that the six warriors he took with him were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>sufficient to enforce the
+king's law. It is certain that he never returned.</p>
+
+<p>Instead there came to the king's kraal a small but formidable party
+under a white man, and they arrived at a propitious moment, for the
+ground before the king's great hut was covered with square bottles, and
+the space in front of the palace was crowded with wretched men chained
+neck to neck and waiting to march to the coast and slavery.</p>
+
+<p>The white man pushed back his helmet.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness gracious Heavens!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly horrid!
+Bosambo, this is immensely illegal an' terrificly disgustin'."</p>
+
+<p>The Chief of the Ochori looked round.</p>
+
+<p>"Dis feller be dam' bad," was his effort.</p>
+
+<p>Bones walked leisurely to the shady canopy under which the king sat, and
+King Karata stared stupidly at the unexpected vision.</p>
+
+<p>"O King," said Bones in the Akasavian vernacular which runs from Dacca
+to the Congo, "this is an evil thing that you do&mdash;against all law."</p>
+
+<p>Open-mouthed Karata continued to stare.</p>
+
+<p>To the crowded kraal, on prisoner and warrior, councillor and dancing
+woman alike, came a silence deep and unbroken.</p>
+
+<p>They heard the words spoken in a familiar tongue, and marvelled that a
+white man should speak it. Bones was carrying a stick and taking
+deliberate aim, and after two trial strokes he brought the nobbly end
+round with a "swish!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>A bottle of square-face smashed into a thousand pieces, and there arose
+on the hot air the sickly scent of crude spirits. Fascinated, silent,
+motionless, King Karata, named not without reason "The Terrible,"
+watched the destruction as bottle followed bottle.</p>
+
+<p>Then as a dim realization of the infamy filtered through his thick
+brain, he rose with a growl like a savage animal, and Bones turned
+quickly. But Bosambo was quicker. One stride brought him to the king's
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"Down, dog!" he said. "O Karata, you are very near the painted hut where
+dead kings lie."</p>
+
+<p>The king sank back and glared to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>All that was animal in him told of his danger; he smelt death in the
+mirthless grin of the white man; he smelt it as strongly under the hand
+of the tall native wearing the monkey-tails of chieftainship. If they
+would only stand away from him they would die quickly enough. Let them
+get out of reach, and a shout, an order, would send them bloodily to the
+ground with little kicks and twitches as the life ran out of them.</p>
+
+<p>But they stood too close, and that order of his meant his death.</p>
+
+<p>"O white man," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, black man," said Bosambo, and lapsed into his English; "hark
+um, you dam' black nigger&mdash;what for you speak um so?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall say 'master' to me, Karata," said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>Bones easily, "for in my
+land 'white man' is evil talk."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Master," said the king sullenly, "this is a strange thing&mdash;for I see
+that you are English and we be servants of another king. Also it is
+forbidden that any white&mdash;that any master should stand in my kraal
+without my word, and I have driven even Igselensi from my face."</p>
+
+<p>"That is all foolish talk, Karata," said Bones. "This is good talk:
+shall Karata live or shall he die? This you shall say. If you send away
+this palaver and say to your people that we are folk whom you desire
+shall live in the shadow of the king's hut, then you live. Let him say
+less than this, Bosambo, and you strike quickly."</p>
+
+<p>The king looked from face to face. Bones had his hand in the uniform
+jacket pocket. Bosambo balanced his killing-spear on the palm of his
+hand, the chief saw with the eye of an expert that the edge was razor
+sharp.</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to the group whom Bones had motioned away when he started
+to speak to the king.</p>
+
+<p>"This palaver is finished," he said, "and the white lord stays in my hut
+for a night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good egg," said Bones as the crowd streamed from the kraal.</p>
+
+<p>Senhor Bonaventura heard of the arrival of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>white man at the chief's
+great kraal and was not perturbed, because there were certain favourite
+traders who came to the king from time to time. He was more concerned by
+the fact that a labour draft of eight hundred men who had been promised
+by Karata had not yet reached Moanda, but frantic panic came from the
+remarkable information of Karata's eccentricities which had reached him
+from his lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>The duc's letter may be reproduced.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Illustrious and Excellent Senhor</span>,</p>
+
+<p>"It is with joy that I announce to you the most remarkable
+reformation of King Karata. The news was brought to me that the
+king had received a number of visitors of an unauthorized
+character, and though I had, as I have reported to you, Illustrious
+and Excellent Senhor, the most unpleasant experience at the hands
+of the king, I deemed it advisable to go to the city of the Greater
+M'fusi and conduct an inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"I learnt that the king had indeed received the visitors, and that
+they had departed on the morning of my arrival carrying with them
+one of their number who was sick. With this party was a white man.
+But the most remarkable circumstance, Illustrious and Excellent
+Senhor, was that the king had called a midnight palaver of his
+councillors and high people of state and had told them that the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>strangers had brought news of such sorrowful character that for
+four moons it would be forbidden to look upon his face. At the end
+of that period he would disappear from the earth and become a god
+amongst the stars.</p>
+
+<p>"At these words, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, the king with
+some reluctance took from one of the strangers a bag in which two
+eyes had been cut, and pulled it over his head and went back into
+his hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Since then he has done many remarkable things. He has forbidden
+the importation of drink, and has freed all labour men to their
+homes. He has nominated Zifingini, the elder chief of the M'fusi,
+to be king after his departure, and has added another fighting
+regiment to his army.</p>
+
+<p>"He is quite changed, and though they cannot see his face and he
+has banished all his wives, relatives and councillors to a distant
+village, he is more popular than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, I feel that at last I am seeing
+the end of the old r&eacute;gime and that we may look forward to a period
+of sobriety and prosperity in the M'fusi.</p>
+
+<p>"Receive the assurance, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, of my
+distinguished consideration."</p></div>
+
+<p>His Excellency went purple and white.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>"Holy mother!" he spluttered apoplectically, "this is ruin!"</p>
+
+<p>With trembling hands he wrote a telegram. Translated in its sense it was
+to this effect&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Recall de Sagosta without fail or there will be nothing doing on pay
+day."</p>
+
+<p>He saw this dispatched on its way, and returned to his bureau. He picked
+up the duc's letter and read it again: then he saw there was a
+postscript.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"P.S.&mdash;In regard to the strangers who visited the king, the man
+they carried away on a closed litter was very sick indeed,
+according to the accounts of woodmen who met the party. He was
+raving at the top of his voice, but the white man was singing very
+loudly.</p>
+
+<p>"P.SS.&mdash;I have just heard, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, that
+the Hooded King (as his people call him) has sent off all his
+richest treasures and many others which he has taken from the huts
+of his deported relatives to one Bosambo, who is a chief of the
+Ochori in British Territory, and is distantly related to Senhor
+Sanders, the Commissioner of that Territory."</p></div>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>This was evidently the Sanga River.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>The native equivalent for "Good morning."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>A book = written permission, any kind of document or writing.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>Both anise and star anise (<i>Illicium anisatum</i>) are to be found in
+the Territories, as also is a small plant which has all the properties
+(and more) of <i>Pimpinella anisum</i>. This was probably the plant.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Author.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>It is as curious a fact that amongst the majority of cannibal people
+there is no equivalent for "thank you."&mdash;E. W.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>A written promise.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>I came when I could.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>In most native countries "white man" is seldom employed save as a
+piece of insolence. It is equivalent to the practice of referring to the natives as niggers.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h3>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:</h3>
+
+<p>Minor changes have been made to correct typesetter's errors; in all
+other respects, every effort has been made to be true to the author's
+words and intent.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 25803-h.htm or 25803-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/8/0/25803/
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/25803-page-images/f0001.png b/25803-page-images/f0001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca7f72d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/f0001.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/f0002.png b/25803-page-images/f0002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067d862
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/f0002.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/f0003.png b/25803-page-images/f0003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1269206
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/f0003.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/f0004.png b/25803-page-images/f0004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..715f8ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/f0004.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/f0005.png b/25803-page-images/f0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2eb859
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/f0005.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0005.png b/25803-page-images/p0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36fff22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0005.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0006.png b/25803-page-images/p0006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4584f57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0006.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0007.png b/25803-page-images/p0007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..567f1d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0007.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0008.png b/25803-page-images/p0008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cffcccc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0008.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0009.png b/25803-page-images/p0009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75da3e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0009.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0010.png b/25803-page-images/p0010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a315b04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0010.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0011.png b/25803-page-images/p0011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06fc464
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0011.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0012.png b/25803-page-images/p0012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8649b5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0012.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0013.png b/25803-page-images/p0013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13aaeb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0013.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0014.png b/25803-page-images/p0014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd29d49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0014.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0015.png b/25803-page-images/p0015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5451e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0015.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0016.png b/25803-page-images/p0016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12d8f8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0016.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0017.png b/25803-page-images/p0017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31b91ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0017.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0018.png b/25803-page-images/p0018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4950cc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0018.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0019.png b/25803-page-images/p0019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ec85ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0019.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0020.png b/25803-page-images/p0020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cbbd03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0020.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0021.png b/25803-page-images/p0021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7c0dc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0021.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0022.png b/25803-page-images/p0022.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f71ca5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0022.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0023.png b/25803-page-images/p0023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e14acf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0023.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0024.png b/25803-page-images/p0024.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83fed3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0024.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0025.png b/25803-page-images/p0025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7525116
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0025.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0026.png b/25803-page-images/p0026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0722d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0026.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0027.png b/25803-page-images/p0027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..174eb25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0027.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0028.png b/25803-page-images/p0028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc58914
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0028.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0029.png b/25803-page-images/p0029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a04351a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0029.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0030.png b/25803-page-images/p0030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c058905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0030.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0031.png b/25803-page-images/p0031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00a9dc4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0031.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0032.png b/25803-page-images/p0032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03ba1d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0032.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0033.png b/25803-page-images/p0033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7956c3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0033.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0034.png b/25803-page-images/p0034.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..931d850
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0034.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0035.png b/25803-page-images/p0035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfddea9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0035.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0036.png b/25803-page-images/p0036.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c61928
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0036.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0037.png b/25803-page-images/p0037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..547a108
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0037.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0038.png b/25803-page-images/p0038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5db6996
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0038.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0039.png b/25803-page-images/p0039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c056c1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0039.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0040.png b/25803-page-images/p0040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..afa651d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0040.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0041.png b/25803-page-images/p0041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9ff580
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0041.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0042.png b/25803-page-images/p0042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2aab2fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0042.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0043.png b/25803-page-images/p0043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e7c883
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0043.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0044.png b/25803-page-images/p0044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c14809
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0044.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0045.png b/25803-page-images/p0045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aac37ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0045.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0046.png b/25803-page-images/p0046.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e310c2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0046.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0047.png b/25803-page-images/p0047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6fada1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0047.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0048.png b/25803-page-images/p0048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95734e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0048.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0049.png b/25803-page-images/p0049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..909a31f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0049.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0050.png b/25803-page-images/p0050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46837a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0050.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0051.png b/25803-page-images/p0051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fb77fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0051.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0052.png b/25803-page-images/p0052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a866a93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0052.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0053.png b/25803-page-images/p0053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a3037b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0053.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0054.png b/25803-page-images/p0054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1faef85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0054.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0055.png b/25803-page-images/p0055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21ac25a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0055.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0056.png b/25803-page-images/p0056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f49d0fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0056.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0057.png b/25803-page-images/p0057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20ec05c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0057.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0058.png b/25803-page-images/p0058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac1889
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0058.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0059.png b/25803-page-images/p0059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b225e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0059.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0060.png b/25803-page-images/p0060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df0932d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0060.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0061.png b/25803-page-images/p0061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4fe469
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0061.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0062.png b/25803-page-images/p0062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b840e16
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0062.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0063.png b/25803-page-images/p0063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fecf3ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0063.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0064.png b/25803-page-images/p0064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b36032
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0064.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0065.png b/25803-page-images/p0065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f2bd85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0065.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0066.png b/25803-page-images/p0066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..349b7cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0066.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0067.png b/25803-page-images/p0067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73a2c38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0067.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0068.png b/25803-page-images/p0068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7d7e50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0068.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0069.png b/25803-page-images/p0069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a68b9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0069.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0070.png b/25803-page-images/p0070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cc12b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0070.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0071.png b/25803-page-images/p0071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce8f74a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0071.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0072.png b/25803-page-images/p0072.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1718e18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0072.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0073.png b/25803-page-images/p0073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c2f397
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0073.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0074.png b/25803-page-images/p0074.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063cfbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0074.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0075.png b/25803-page-images/p0075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2652414
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0075.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0076.png b/25803-page-images/p0076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec86afe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0076.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0077.png b/25803-page-images/p0077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eeae2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0077.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0078.png b/25803-page-images/p0078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4260e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0078.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0079.png b/25803-page-images/p0079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d16fa7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0079.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0080.png b/25803-page-images/p0080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5169899
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0080.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0081.png b/25803-page-images/p0081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66d4354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0081.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0082.png b/25803-page-images/p0082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed2a8aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0082.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0083.png b/25803-page-images/p0083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17b06b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0083.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0084.png b/25803-page-images/p0084.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cc9f59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0084.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0085.png b/25803-page-images/p0085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..984b014
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0085.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0086.png b/25803-page-images/p0086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8260550
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0086.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0087.png b/25803-page-images/p0087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..007ec18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0087.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0088.png b/25803-page-images/p0088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06121a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0088.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0089.png b/25803-page-images/p0089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dee72bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0089.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0090.png b/25803-page-images/p0090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f357df8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0090.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0091.png b/25803-page-images/p0091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8ff015
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0091.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0092.png b/25803-page-images/p0092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..545fc4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0092.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0093.png b/25803-page-images/p0093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cabbef8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0093.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0094.png b/25803-page-images/p0094.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7dc2cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0094.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0095.png b/25803-page-images/p0095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..714d97b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0095.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0096.png b/25803-page-images/p0096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb9675
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0096.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0097.png b/25803-page-images/p0097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b69c678
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0097.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0098.png b/25803-page-images/p0098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..328e3a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0098.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0099.png b/25803-page-images/p0099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee50948
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0099.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0100.png b/25803-page-images/p0100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2459f58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0100.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0101.png b/25803-page-images/p0101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd57189
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0101.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0102.png b/25803-page-images/p0102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27a1d18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0102.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0103.png b/25803-page-images/p0103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0db7e39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0103.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0104.png b/25803-page-images/p0104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a61dae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0104.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0105.png b/25803-page-images/p0105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd8c2bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0105.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0106.png b/25803-page-images/p0106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16e55f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0106.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0107.png b/25803-page-images/p0107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6b9b65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0107.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0108.png b/25803-page-images/p0108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2260df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0108.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0109.png b/25803-page-images/p0109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f55611
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0109.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0110.png b/25803-page-images/p0110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc6ae75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0110.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0111.png b/25803-page-images/p0111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63e207e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0111.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0112.png b/25803-page-images/p0112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b9ba90
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0112.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0113.png b/25803-page-images/p0113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15b7d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0113.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0114.png b/25803-page-images/p0114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8aa78c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0114.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0115.png b/25803-page-images/p0115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3356dd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0115.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0116.png b/25803-page-images/p0116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ea0155
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0116.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0117.png b/25803-page-images/p0117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0b0723
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0117.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0118.png b/25803-page-images/p0118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2cd8e28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0118.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0119.png b/25803-page-images/p0119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4091293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0119.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0120.png b/25803-page-images/p0120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01c07a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0120.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0121.png b/25803-page-images/p0121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42caef4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0121.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0122.png b/25803-page-images/p0122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..207efb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0122.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0123.png b/25803-page-images/p0123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8947f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0123.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0124.png b/25803-page-images/p0124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7cb26e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0124.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0125.png b/25803-page-images/p0125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..143cb31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0125.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0126.png b/25803-page-images/p0126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60380fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0126.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0127.png b/25803-page-images/p0127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..426cea0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0127.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0128.png b/25803-page-images/p0128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df42f74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0128.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0129.png b/25803-page-images/p0129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9daa8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0129.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0130.png b/25803-page-images/p0130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2b62ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0130.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0131.png b/25803-page-images/p0131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..891b299
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0131.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0132.png b/25803-page-images/p0132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d23e61a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0132.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0133.png b/25803-page-images/p0133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f16bb28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0133.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0134.png b/25803-page-images/p0134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28ab1c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0134.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0135.png b/25803-page-images/p0135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fbf368
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0135.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0136.png b/25803-page-images/p0136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..475cef8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0136.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0137.png b/25803-page-images/p0137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9529054
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0137.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0138.png b/25803-page-images/p0138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58e0d0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0138.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0139.png b/25803-page-images/p0139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d21b592
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0139.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0140.png b/25803-page-images/p0140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5dceedf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0140.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0141.png b/25803-page-images/p0141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47a0259
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0141.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0142.png b/25803-page-images/p0142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a58168
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0142.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0143.png b/25803-page-images/p0143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec782e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0143.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0144.png b/25803-page-images/p0144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fdbb9c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0144.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0145.png b/25803-page-images/p0145.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06dcc51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0145.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0146.png b/25803-page-images/p0146.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ff66fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0146.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0147.png b/25803-page-images/p0147.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf86cdf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0147.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0148.png b/25803-page-images/p0148.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1f0fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0148.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0149.png b/25803-page-images/p0149.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57aacc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0149.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0150.png b/25803-page-images/p0150.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8840c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0150.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0151.png b/25803-page-images/p0151.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..402c575
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0151.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0152.png b/25803-page-images/p0152.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ff1ef2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0152.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0153.png b/25803-page-images/p0153.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ed3f7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0153.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0154.png b/25803-page-images/p0154.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..602e1f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0154.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0155.png b/25803-page-images/p0155.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d505b20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0155.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0156.png b/25803-page-images/p0156.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f091c10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0156.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0157.png b/25803-page-images/p0157.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09eca8a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0157.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0158.png b/25803-page-images/p0158.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9506607
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0158.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0159.png b/25803-page-images/p0159.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..149a3e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0159.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0160.png b/25803-page-images/p0160.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c90dfbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0160.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0161.png b/25803-page-images/p0161.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d149d43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0161.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0162.png b/25803-page-images/p0162.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dbbf3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0162.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0163.png b/25803-page-images/p0163.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bdd11d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0163.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0164.png b/25803-page-images/p0164.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ab4edd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0164.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0165.png b/25803-page-images/p0165.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e43fe4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0165.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0166.png b/25803-page-images/p0166.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7c4c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0166.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0167.png b/25803-page-images/p0167.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30fa415
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0167.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0168.png b/25803-page-images/p0168.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09aad9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0168.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0169.png b/25803-page-images/p0169.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7da609e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0169.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0170.png b/25803-page-images/p0170.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68a3695
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0170.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0171.png b/25803-page-images/p0171.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e8de2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0171.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0172.png b/25803-page-images/p0172.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8335f4c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0172.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0173.png b/25803-page-images/p0173.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0e41b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0173.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0174.png b/25803-page-images/p0174.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c28f7b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0174.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0175.png b/25803-page-images/p0175.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd00741
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0175.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0176.png b/25803-page-images/p0176.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47a17f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0176.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0177.png b/25803-page-images/p0177.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e2c0eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0177.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0178.png b/25803-page-images/p0178.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11ec623
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0178.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0179.png b/25803-page-images/p0179.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5a6068
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0179.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0180.png b/25803-page-images/p0180.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e645ebc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0180.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0181.png b/25803-page-images/p0181.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fc3663
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0181.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0182.png b/25803-page-images/p0182.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abdfd13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0182.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0183.png b/25803-page-images/p0183.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b4ca77
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0183.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0184.png b/25803-page-images/p0184.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d4857e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0184.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0185.png b/25803-page-images/p0185.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6430489
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0185.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0186.png b/25803-page-images/p0186.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fdd9f21
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0186.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0187.png b/25803-page-images/p0187.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a99073
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0187.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0188.png b/25803-page-images/p0188.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddf20c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0188.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0189.png b/25803-page-images/p0189.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71eeef3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0189.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0190.png b/25803-page-images/p0190.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b8d7fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0190.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0191.png b/25803-page-images/p0191.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..93cb801
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0191.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0192.png b/25803-page-images/p0192.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd080c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0192.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0193.png b/25803-page-images/p0193.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..073c4fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0193.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0194.png b/25803-page-images/p0194.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5308bb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0194.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0195.png b/25803-page-images/p0195.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17761ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0195.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0196.png b/25803-page-images/p0196.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7465ac6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0196.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0197.png b/25803-page-images/p0197.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cc8122
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0197.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0198.png b/25803-page-images/p0198.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47e55cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0198.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0199.png b/25803-page-images/p0199.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4f2b79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0199.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0200.png b/25803-page-images/p0200.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea6cf2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0200.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0201.png b/25803-page-images/p0201.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..549bb93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0201.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0202.png b/25803-page-images/p0202.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58d2e27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0202.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0203.png b/25803-page-images/p0203.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aff2cb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0203.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0204.png b/25803-page-images/p0204.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a37e3da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0204.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0205.png b/25803-page-images/p0205.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2833fcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0205.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0206.png b/25803-page-images/p0206.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e93ae9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0206.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0207.png b/25803-page-images/p0207.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de9189b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0207.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0208.png b/25803-page-images/p0208.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11f2c0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0208.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0209.png b/25803-page-images/p0209.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58f560c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0209.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0210.png b/25803-page-images/p0210.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f3b0ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0210.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0211.png b/25803-page-images/p0211.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bed12b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0211.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0212.png b/25803-page-images/p0212.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d6a23c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0212.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0213.png b/25803-page-images/p0213.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55b2ef2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0213.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0214.png b/25803-page-images/p0214.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e9d07b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0214.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0215.png b/25803-page-images/p0215.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fcf07b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0215.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0216.png b/25803-page-images/p0216.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b94b5ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0216.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0217.png b/25803-page-images/p0217.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2d2ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0217.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0218.png b/25803-page-images/p0218.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6431319
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0218.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0219.png b/25803-page-images/p0219.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66df389
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0219.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0220.png b/25803-page-images/p0220.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..708da41
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0220.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0221.png b/25803-page-images/p0221.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02a7cf3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0221.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0222.png b/25803-page-images/p0222.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c28d4da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0222.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0223.png b/25803-page-images/p0223.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27d2466
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0223.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0224.png b/25803-page-images/p0224.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c7b461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0224.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0225.png b/25803-page-images/p0225.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1077cf3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0225.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0226.png b/25803-page-images/p0226.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0b84eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0226.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0227.png b/25803-page-images/p0227.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff390c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0227.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0228.png b/25803-page-images/p0228.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a2c6dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0228.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0229.png b/25803-page-images/p0229.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a86725d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0229.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0230.png b/25803-page-images/p0230.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..843fd53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0230.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0231.png b/25803-page-images/p0231.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d32a31d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0231.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0232.png b/25803-page-images/p0232.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8efe9a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0232.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0233.png b/25803-page-images/p0233.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d67d5da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0233.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0234.png b/25803-page-images/p0234.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9681e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0234.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0235.png b/25803-page-images/p0235.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed28db1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0235.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0236.png b/25803-page-images/p0236.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38c3c66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0236.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0237.png b/25803-page-images/p0237.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c541bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0237.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0238.png b/25803-page-images/p0238.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c592c68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0238.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0239.png b/25803-page-images/p0239.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fd6245
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0239.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0240.png b/25803-page-images/p0240.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bbb5f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0240.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0241.png b/25803-page-images/p0241.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7439e69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0241.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0242.png b/25803-page-images/p0242.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ec68a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0242.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0243.png b/25803-page-images/p0243.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ffb420
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0243.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0244.png b/25803-page-images/p0244.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b15cc99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0244.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0245.png b/25803-page-images/p0245.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf3b28b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0245.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0246.png b/25803-page-images/p0246.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec1a05b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0246.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0247.png b/25803-page-images/p0247.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b7aedd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0247.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0248.png b/25803-page-images/p0248.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4cdf692
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0248.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0249.png b/25803-page-images/p0249.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12237d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0249.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0250.png b/25803-page-images/p0250.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7fb07b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0250.png
diff --git a/25803-page-images/p0251.png b/25803-page-images/p0251.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c60b2e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803-page-images/p0251.png
diff --git a/25803.txt b/25803.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..133af91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7858 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Keepers of the King's Peace
+
+Author: Edgar Wallace
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2008 [EBook #25803]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THE KEEPERS OF
+ THE KING'S PEACE
+
+ BY
+ EDGAR WALLACE
+
+ WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
+ LONDON AND MELBOURNE
+
+
+
+
+ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS LTD.,
+ LONDON AND TONBRIDGE
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAP.                                                      PAGE
+
+    I BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER                              5
+
+   II BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION                             28
+
+  III THE MAKER OF STORMS                                    53
+
+   IV BONES AND THE WIRELESS                                 75
+
+    V THE REMEDY                                             99
+
+   VI THE MEDICINE MAN                                      117
+
+  VII BONES, KING-MAKER                                     135
+
+ VIII THE TAMER OF BEASTS                                   154
+
+   IX THE MERCENARIES                                       169
+
+    X THE WATERS OF MADNESS                                 191
+
+   XI EYE TO EYE                                            215
+
+  XII THE HOODED KING                                       233
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+
+ PAT
+
+ (P. M. C. W.)
+
+
+
+
+THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER
+
+
+To Isongo, which stands upon the tributary of that name, came a woman of
+the Isisi who had lost her husband through a providential tree falling
+upon him. I say "providential," for it was notorious that he was an evil
+man, a drinker of beer and a favourite of many bad persons. Also he made
+magic in the forest, and was reputedly the familiar of Bashunbi the
+devil brother of M'shimba-M'shamba. He beat his wives, and once had set
+fire to his house from sheer wickedness. So that when he was borne back
+to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked
+themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped
+through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion
+of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than
+the occasion called for.
+
+An old man named D'wiri, who knew every step of every dance, saw this
+and said in his stern way that it was shameless. But he was old and was,
+moreover, in fear for the decorum of his own obsequies if these
+outrageous departures from custom were approved or allowed to pass
+without reprimand.
+
+When M'lama, the wife of G'mami, had seen her lord depart in the canoe
+for burial in the middle island and had wailed her conventional grief,
+she washed the dust from her body at the river's edge and went back to
+her hut. And all that was grief for the dead man was washed away with
+the dust of mourning.
+
+Many moons came out of the sky, were wasted and died before the woman
+M'lama showed signs of her gifts. It is said that they appeared one
+night after a great storm wherein lightning played such strange tricks
+upon the river that even the old man D'wiri could not remember parallel
+instances.
+
+In the night the wife of a hunter named E'sani-Osoni brought a dying
+child into the hut of the widow. He had been choked by a fish-bone and
+was _in extremis_ when M'lama put her hand upon his head and straightway
+the bone flew from his mouth, "and there was a cry terrible to
+hear--such a cry as a leopard makes when he is pursued by ghosts."
+
+A week later a baby girl fell into a terrible fit and M'lama had laid
+her hand upon it and behold! it slept from that moment.
+
+Ahmet, chief of the Government spies, heard of these happenings and came
+a three days' journey by river to Isongo.
+
+"What are these stories of miracles?" he asked.
+
+"_Capita_," said the chief, using the term of regard which is employed
+in the Belgian Congo, "this woman M'lama is a true witch and has great
+gifts, for she raises the dead by the touch of her hand. This I have
+seen. Also it is said that when U'gomi, the woodcutter, made a fault,
+cutting his foot in two, this woman healed him marvellously."
+
+"I will see this M'lama," said Ahmet importantly.
+
+He found her in her hut tossing four bones idly. These were the shanks
+of goats, and each time they fell differently.
+
+"O Ahmet," she said, when he entered, "you have a wife who is sick, also
+a first-born boy who does not speak though he is more than six seasons
+old."
+
+Ahmet squatted down by her side.
+
+"Woman," said he, "tell me something that is not the talk of river and I
+will believe your magic."
+
+"To-morrow your master, the lord Sandi, will send you a book which will
+give you happiness," she said.
+
+"Every day my lord sends me a book," retorted the sceptical Ahmet, "and
+each brings me happiness. Also it is common talk that at this time
+there come messengers carrying bags of silver and salt to pay men
+according to their services."
+
+Undismayed she tried her last shot.
+
+"You have a crooked finger which none can straighten--behold!"
+
+She took his hand in hers and pressed the injured phlange. A sharp pain
+shot up his arm and he winced, pulling back his hand--but the year-old
+dislocation which had defied the effort of the coast doctor was
+straightened out, and though the movement was exquisitely painful he
+could bend it.
+
+"I see you are a true witch," he said, greatly impressed, for a native
+has a horror of deformity of any kind, and he sent back word of the
+phenomenon to Sanders.
+
+Sanders at the same time was in receipt of other news which alternately
+pleased him and filled him with panic. The mail had come in by fast
+launch and had brought Captain Hamilton of the Houssas a very bulky
+letter written in a feminine hand. He had broken the glad news to
+Commissioner Sanders, but that gentleman was not certain in his mind
+whether the startling intelligence conveyed by the letter was good or
+bad.
+
+"I'm sure the country will suit her," he said, "this part of the country
+at any rate--but what will Bones say?"
+
+"Bones!" repeated Captain Hamilton scornfully. "What the dickens does
+it matter what Bones says?"
+
+Nevertheless, he went to the sea-end of the verandah, and his roar
+rivalled the thunder of the surf.
+
+"Bones!"
+
+There was no answer and for an excellent reason.
+
+Sanders came out of the bungalow, his helmet on the back of his head, a
+cheroot tilted dizzily.
+
+"Where is he?" he asked.
+
+Hamilton turned.
+
+"I asked him to--at least I didn't ask him, he volunteered--to peg out a
+trench line."
+
+"Expect an invasion?" asked Sanders.
+
+Hamilton grinned.
+
+"Bones does," he said. "He's full of the idea, and offered to give me
+tips on the way a trench should be dug--he's feeling rotten about things
+... you know what I mean. His regiment was at Mons."
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"I understand," he said quietly. "And you ... you're a jolly good
+soldier, Hamilton--how do you feel about it all?"
+
+Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"They would have taken me for the Cameroons, but somebody had to stay,"
+he said quietly. "After all, it is one's business to ... to do one's job
+in the station of life to which it has pleased God to call him. This is
+my work ... here."
+
+Sanders laid his hand on the other's shoulder.
+
+"That's the game as it should be played," he said, and his blue eyes
+were as soft and as tender as a woman's. "There is no war here--we are
+the keepers of the King's peace, Hamilton."
+
+"It's rotten...."
+
+"I know--I feel that way myself. We're out of it--the glory of it--the
+chance of it--the tragedy of it. And there are others. Think of the men
+in India eating their hearts out ... praying for the order that will
+carry them from the comfort of their lives to the misery and the
+death--and the splendour, I grant you--of war."
+
+He sighed and looked wistfully to the blue sea.
+
+Hamilton beckoned a Houssa corporal who was crossing the garden of the
+Residency.
+
+"Ho, Mustaf," he said, in his queer coast Arabic, "where shall I look
+for my lord Tibbetti?"
+
+The corporal turned and pointed to the woods which begin at the back of
+the Residency and carry without a break for three hundred miles.
+
+"Lord, he went there carrying many strange things--also there went with
+him Ali Abid, his servant."
+
+Hamilton reached through an open window of the bungalow and fished out
+his helmet with his walking-stick.
+
+"We'll find Bones," he said grimly; "he's been gone three hours and he's
+had time to re-plan Verdun."
+
+It took some time to discover the working party, but when it was found
+the trouble was well repaid.
+
+Bones was stretched on a canvas chair under the shade of a big Isisi
+palm. His helmet was tipped forward so that the brim rested on the
+bridge of his nose, his thin red arms were folded on his breast, and
+their gentle rise and fall testified to his shame. Two pegs had been
+driven in, and between them a string sagged half-heartedly.
+
+Curled up under a near-by bush was, presumably, Ali Abid--presumably,
+because all that was visible was a very broad stretch of brown satin
+skin which showed between the waistline of a pair of white cotton
+trousers and a duck jacket.
+
+They looked down at the unconscious Bones for a long time in silence.
+
+"What will he say when I kick him?" asked Hamilton. "You can have the
+first guess."
+
+Sanders frowned thoughtfully.
+
+"He'll say that he was thinking out a new system of communicating
+trenches," he said. "He's been boring me to tears over saps and things."
+
+Hamilton shook his head.
+
+"Wrong, sir," he said; "that isn't the lie he'll tell. He will say that
+I kept him up so late last night working at the men's pay-sheets that he
+couldn't keep awake."
+
+Bones slept on.
+
+"He may say that it was coffee after tiffin," suggested Sanders after a
+while; "he said the other day that coffee always made him sleep."
+
+"'Swoon' was the word he used, sir," corrected Hamilton. "I don't think
+he'll offer that suggestion now--the only other excuse I can think of is
+that he was repeating the Bomongo irregular verbs. Bones!"
+
+He stooped and broke off a long grass and inserted it in the right ear
+of Lieutenant Tibbetts, twiddling the end delicately. Bones made a
+feeble clutch at his ear, but did not open his eyes.
+
+"Bones!" said Hamilton, and kicked him less gently. "Get up, you lazy
+devil--there's an invasion."
+
+Bones leapt to his feet and staggered a little; blinked fiercely at his
+superior and saluted.
+
+"Enemy on the left flank, sir," he reported stiffly. "Shall we have
+dinner or take a taxi?"
+
+"Wake up, Napoleon," begged Hamilton, "you're at Waterloo."
+
+Bones blinked more slowly.
+
+"I'm afraid I've been unconscious, dear old officer," he confessed. "The
+fact is----"
+
+"Listen to this, everybody," said Hamilton admiringly.
+
+"The fact is, sir," said Bones, with dignity, "I fell asleep--that
+beastly coffee I had after lunch, added to the fatigue of sittin' up
+half the night with those jolly old accounts of yours, got the better of
+me. I was sittin' down workin' out one of the dinkiest little ideas in
+trenches--a sort of communicatin' trench where you needn't get wet in
+the rainiest weather--when I--well, I just swooned off."
+
+Hamilton looked disappointed.
+
+"Weren't you doing anything with the Bomongo verbs?" he demanded.
+
+A light came to Bones's eyes.
+
+"By Jove, sir!" he said heartily, "that was it, of course.... The last
+thing I remember was...."
+
+"Kick that man of yours and come back to the bungalow," Hamilton
+interrupted, "there's a job for you, my boy."
+
+He walked across and stirred the second sleeper with the toe of his
+boot.
+
+Ali Abid wriggled round and sat up.
+
+He was square of face, with a large mouth and two very big brown eyes.
+He was enormously fat, but it was not fat of the flabby type. Though he
+called himself Ali, it was, as Bones admitted, "sheer swank" to do so,
+for this man had "coast" written all over him.
+
+He got up slowly and saluted first his master, then Sanders, and lastly
+Hamilton.
+
+Bones had found him at Cape Coast Castle on the occasion of a joy-ride
+which the young officer had taken on a British man-of-war. Ali Abid had
+been the heaven-sent servant, and though Sanders had a horror of natives
+who spoke English, the English of Ali Abid was his very own.
+
+He had been for five years the servant of Professor Garrileigh, the
+eminent bacteriologist, the account of whose researches in the field of
+tropical medicines fill eight volumes of closely-printed matter, every
+page of which contains words which are not to be found in most lexicons.
+
+They walked back to the Residency, Ali Abid in the rear.
+
+"I want you to go up to the Isongo, Bones," said Sanders; "there may be
+some trouble there--a woman is working miracles."
+
+"He might get a new head," murmured Hamilton, but Bones pretended not to
+hear.
+
+"Use your tact and get back before the 17th for the party."
+
+"The----?" asked Bones.
+
+He had an irritating trick of employing extravagant gestures of a
+fairly commonplace kind. Thus, if he desired to hear a statement
+repeated--though he had heard it well enough the first time--he
+would bend his head with a puzzled wrinkle of forehead, put his hand
+to his ear and wait anxiously, even painfully, for the repetition.
+
+"You heard what the Commissioner said," growled Hamilton.
+"Party--P-A-R-T-Y."
+
+"My birthday is not until April, your Excellency," said Bones.
+
+"I'd guess the date--but what's the use?" interposed Hamilton.
+
+"It isn't a birthday party, Bones," said Sanders. "We are giving a
+house-warming for Miss Hamilton."
+
+Bones gasped, and turned an incredulous eye upon his chief.
+
+"You haven't a sister, surely, dear old officer?" he asked.
+
+"Why the dickens shouldn't I have a sister?" demanded his chief.
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"A matter of deduction, sir," he said quietly. "Absence of all evidence
+of a soothin' and lovin' influence in your lonely an' unsympathetic
+upbringin'; hardness of heart an' a disposition to nag, combined with a
+rough and unpromisin' exterior--a sister, good Lord!"
+
+"Anyway, she's coming, Bones," said Hamilton; "and she's looking forward
+to seeing you--I've written an awful lot about you."
+
+Bones smirked.
+
+"Of course," he said, "you've overdone it a bit--women hate to be
+disillusioned. What you ought to have done, sir, is to describe me as a
+sort of ass--genial and all that sort of thing, but a commonplace sort
+of ass."
+
+Hamilton nodded.
+
+"That's exactly what I've done, Bones," he said. "I told her how Bosambo
+did you in the eye for twenty pounds, and how you fell into the water
+looking for buried treasure, and how the Isisi tried to sell you a
+flying crocodile and would have sold it too, if it hadn't been for my
+timely arrival. I told her----"
+
+"I think you've said enough, sir."
+
+Bones was very red and very haughty.
+
+"Far be it from me to resent your attitude or contradict your calumnies.
+Miss Hamilton will see very little of me. An inflexible sense of duty
+will keep me away from the frivolous circle of society, sir. Alert an'
+sleepless----"
+
+"Trenches," said Hamilton brutally.
+
+Bones winced, regarded his superior for a moment with pain, saluted, and
+turning on his heel, stalked away, followed by Ali Abid no less pained.
+
+He left at dawn the next morning, and both Sanders and Hamilton came
+down to the concrete quay to see the _Zaire_ start on her journey.
+Sanders gave his final instructions--
+
+"If the woman is upsetting the people, arrest her; if she has too big a
+hold on them, arrest her; but if she is just amusing them, come back."
+
+"And don't forget the 17th," said Hamilton.
+
+"I may arrive a little late for that," said Bones gravely. "I don't
+wish to be a skeleton at your jolly old festive board, dear old
+sportsman--you will excuse my absence to Miss Hamilton. I shall
+probably have a headache and all that sort of thing."
+
+He waved a sad farewell as the _Zaire_ passed round the bend of the
+river, and looked, as he desired to look, a melancholy figure with his
+huge pipe in his mouth and his hands thrust dejectedly into his trousers
+pockets.
+
+Once out of sight he became his own jovial self.
+
+"Lieutenant Ali," he said, "get out my log and put it in old Sanders'
+cabin, make me a cup of tea and keep her jolly old head east, east by
+north."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said Ali in excellent English.
+
+The "log" which Bones kept was one of the secret documents which never
+come under the eye of the superior authorities. There were such entries
+as--
+
+     "Wind N.N.W. Sea calm. Hostile craft sighted on port bow, at 10.31
+     a.m. General Quarters sounded 10.32. Interrogated Captain of the
+     hostile craft and warned him not to fish in fair-way. Sighted Cape
+     M'Gooboori 12.17, stopped for lunch and wood."
+
+What though Cape M'Gooboori was the village of that name and the "calm
+sea" was no more than the placid bosom of the Great River? What though
+Bones's "hostile craft" was a dilapidated canoe, manned by one aged and
+bewildered man of the Isisi engaged in spearing fish? Bones saw all
+things through the rosy spectacles of adventurous youth denied its
+proper share of experience.
+
+At sunset the _Zaire_ came gingerly through the shoals that run out from
+the Isongo beach, and Bones went ashore to conduct his investigations.
+It chanced that the evening had been chosen by M'lama, the witch, for
+certain wonderful manifestations, and the village was almost deserted.
+
+In a wood and in a place of green trees M'lama sat tossing her sheep
+shanks, and a dense throng of solemn men and women squatted or sat or
+tiptoed about her--leaving her a respectable space for her operations. A
+bright fire crackled and glowed at her side, and into this, from time to
+time, she thrust little sticks of plaited straw and drew them forth
+blazing and spluttering until with a quick breath she extinguished the
+flame and examined the grey ash.
+
+"Listen, all people," she said, "and be silent, lest my great ju-ju
+strike you dead. What man gave me this?"
+
+"It was I, M'lama," said an eager woman, her face wrinkled with
+apprehension as she held up her brown palm.
+
+The witch peered forward at the speaker.
+
+"O F'sela!" she chanted, "there is a man-child for thee who shall be
+greater than chiefs; also you will suffer from a sickness which shall
+make you mad."
+
+"O ko!"
+
+Half dismayed by the promise of her own fate; half exalted by the career
+the witch had sketched for her unborn son, the woman stared
+incredulously, fearfully at the swaying figure by the fire.
+
+Again a plaited stick went into the fire, was withdrawn and blown out,
+and the woman again prophesied.
+
+And sometimes it was of honours and riches she spoke, and sometimes--and
+more often--of death and disaster. Into this shuddering group strode
+Bones, very finely clad in white raiment yet limp withal, for the night
+was close and the way had been long and rough.
+
+The sitters scrambled to their feet, their knuckles at their teeth, for
+this was a moment of great embarrassment.
+
+"Oh, M'lama," said Bones agreeably, and spoke in the soft dialect of the
+Isisi by-the-River, "prophesy for me!"
+
+She looked up sullenly, divining trouble for herself.
+
+"Lord," she said, with a certain smooth venom, "there is a great
+sickness for you--and behold you will go far away and die, and none
+shall miss you."
+
+Bones went very red, and shook an indignant forefinger at the offending
+prophetess.
+
+"You're a wicked old storyteller!" he stammered. "You're depressin' the
+people--you naughty girl! I hate you--I simply loathe you!"
+
+As he spoke in English she was not impressed.
+
+"Goin' about the country puttin' people off their grub, by Jove!" he
+stormed; "tellin' stories ... oh, dash it, I shall have to be awfully
+severe with you!"
+
+Severe he was, for he arrested her, to the relief of her audience, who
+waited long enough to discover whether or not her ju-ju would strike him
+dead, and being obviously disappointed by her failure to provide this
+spectacle, melted away.
+
+Close to the gangway of the _Zaire_ she persuaded one of her Houssa
+guard to release his hold. She persuaded him by the simple expedient of
+burying her sharp white teeth in the fleshy part of his arm--and bolted.
+They captured her half mad with panic and fear of her unknown fate, and
+brought her to the boat.
+
+Bones, fussing about the struggling group, dancing with excitement, was
+honourably wounded by the chance contact of his nose with a wild and
+whirling fist.
+
+"Put her in the store cabin!" he commanded breathlessly. "Oh, what a
+wicked woman!"
+
+In the morning as the boat got under way Ali came to him with a
+distressing story.
+
+"Your Excellency will be pained to hear," he said, "that the female
+prisoner has eradicated her costume."
+
+"Eradicated...?" repeated the puzzled Bones, gently touching the patch
+of sticking-plaster on his nose.
+
+"In the night," explained this former slave of science, "the subject has
+developed symptoms of mania, and has entirely dispensed with her
+clothes--to wit, by destruction."
+
+"She's torn up her clothes?" gasped Bones, his hair rising and Ali
+nodded.
+
+Now, the dress of a native woman varies according to the degree in
+which she falls under missionary influence. Isongo was well within
+the sphere of the River Mission, and so M'lama's costume consisted
+of a tight-fitting piece of print which wound round and round the body
+in the manner of a kilt, covering the figure from armpit to feet.
+
+Bones went to the open window of the prison cabin, and steadfastly
+averting his gaze, called--
+
+"M'lama!"
+
+No reply came, and he called again.
+
+"M'lama," he said gently, in the river dialect, "what shall Sandi say to
+this evil that you do?"
+
+There was no reply, only a snuffling sound of woe.
+
+"Oh, ai!" sobbed the voice.
+
+"M'lama, presently we shall come to the Mission house where the God-men
+are, and I will bring you clothing--these you will put on you," said
+Bones, still staring blankly over the side of the ship at the waters
+which foamed past her low hull; "for if my lord Sandi see you as I see
+you--I mean as I wouldn't for the world see you, you improper person,"
+he corrected himself hastily in English--"if my lord Sandi saw you, he
+would feel great shame. Also," he added, as a horrible thought made him
+go cold all over, "also the lady who comes to my lord Militini--oh,
+lor!"
+
+These last two words were in English.
+
+Fortunately there was a Jesuit settlement near by, and here Bones
+stopped and interviewed the stout and genial priest in charge.
+
+"It's curious how they all do it," reflected the priest, as he led the
+way to his storehouse. "I've known 'em to tear up their clothes in an
+East End police cell--white folk, the same as you and I."
+
+He rummaged in a big box and produced certain garments.
+
+"My last consignment from a well-meaning London congregation," he
+smiled, and flung out a heap of dresses, hats, stockings and shoes. "If
+they'd sent a roll or two of print I might have used them--but strong
+religious convictions do not entirely harmonize with a last year's Paris
+model."
+
+Bones, flushed and unhappy, grabbed an armful of clothing, and showering
+the chuckling priest with an incoherent medley of apology and thanks,
+hurried back to the _Zaire_.
+
+"Behold, M'lama," he said, as he thrust his loot through the window of
+the little deck-house, "there are many grand things such as great ladies
+wear--now you shall appear before Sandi beautiful to see."
+
+He logged the happening in characteristic language, and was in the midst
+of this literary exercise when the tiny steamer charged a sandbank, and
+before her engines could slow or reverse she had slid to the top and
+rested in two feet of water.
+
+A rueful Bones surveyed the situation and returned to his cabin to
+conclude his diary with--
+
+     "12.19 struck a reef off B'lidi Bay. Fear vessel total wreck. Boats
+     all ready for lowering."
+
+As a matter of fact there were neither boats to lower nor need to lower
+them, because the crew were already standing in the river (up to their
+hips) and were endeavouring to push the _Zaire_ to deep water.
+
+In this they were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours
+until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the
+_Zaire_ clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of
+his salvage.
+
+He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck,
+and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal
+she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore
+a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced
+deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing
+ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.
+
+"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.
+
+The rest of the journey was uneventful until the _Zaire_ had reached the
+northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly
+cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on
+which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had
+isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.
+
+Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea
+through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and
+western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the
+bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with
+a sense of his resourcefulness--and incidentally present himself in the
+most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily
+life.
+
+He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now....
+
+The _Zaire_ was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and
+agile person might have stepped ashore.
+
+M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.
+
+He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the
+space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in
+such breeze as there was.
+
+"Hi! Don't do that ... naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but
+she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of
+the _Zaire_ began to thresh madly astern.
+
+Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An
+ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no
+ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing
+propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one
+stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed,
+in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in
+the direction the fugitive had taken.
+
+For a little time he did not see her, then he glimpsed the white of a
+pique dress, and with a yell of admonition started in pursuit.
+
+She stood hesitating a moment, then fled, but he was on her before she
+had gone a dozen yards; the counterpane was flung over her head, and
+though she kicked and struggled and indulged in muffled squeaks, he
+lifted her up in his arms and staggered back to the boat.
+
+They ran out a gangway plank and across this he passed with his burden,
+declining all offers of assistance.
+
+"Close the window," he gasped; "open the door--now, you naughty old
+lady!"
+
+He bundled her in, counterpane enmeshed and reduced to helpless silence,
+slammed the door and leant panting against the cabin, mopping his brow.
+
+"Phew!" said Bones, and repeated the inelegant remark many times. All
+this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and
+Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important young man who saluted
+them.
+
+"All correct, sir," said Bones, stiff as a ramrod; "no
+casualties--except as per my nose which will be noted in the margin of
+my report--one female prisoner secured after heroic chase, which, I
+trust, sir, you will duly report to my jolly old superiors----"
+
+"Don't gas so much, Bones," said Hamilton. "Come along and meet my
+sister--hullo, what the devil's that?"
+
+They turned with one accord to the forest path.
+
+Two native policemen were coming towards them, and between them a
+bedraggled M'lama, her skirt all awry, her fine hat at a rakish angle,
+stepped defiantly.
+
+"Heavens!" said Bones, "she's got away again.... That's my prisoner,
+dear old officer!"
+
+Hamilton frowned.
+
+"I hope she hasn't frightened Pat ... she was walking in the
+reservation."
+
+Bones did not faint, his knees went from under him, but he recovered by
+clutching the arm of his faithful Ali.
+
+"Dear old friend," he murmured brokenly, "accidents ... error of
+judgment ... the greatest tragedy of my life...."
+
+"What's the matter with you?" demanded Sanders in alarm, for the face of
+Bones was ghastly.
+
+Lieutenant Tibbetts made no reply, but walked with unsteady steps to the
+lock-up, fumbled with the key and opened the door.
+
+There stepped forth a dishevelled and wrathful girl (she was a little
+scared, too, I suspect), the most radiant and lovely figure that had
+ever dawned upon the horizon of Bones.
+
+She looked from her staggered brother to Sanders, from Sanders to her
+miserable custodian.
+
+"What on earth----" began Hamilton.
+
+Then her lips twitched and she fell into a fit of uncontrollable
+laughter.
+
+"If," said Bones huskily, "if in an excess of zeal I mistook... in the
+gloamin', madame ... white dress...."
+
+He spread out his arms in a gesture of extravagant despair.
+
+"I can do no more than a gentleman.... I have a loaded revolver in my
+cabin ... farewell!"
+
+He bowed deeply to the girl, saluted his dumbfounded chief, tripped up
+over a bucket and would have fallen but for Hamilton's hand.
+
+"You're an ass," said Hamilton, struggling to preserve his sense of
+annoyance. "Pat--this is Lieutenant Tibbetts, of whom I have often
+written."
+
+The girl looked at Bones, her eyes moist with laughter.
+
+"I guessed it from the first," she said, and Bones writhed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION
+
+
+Captain Hamilton of the King's Houssas had two responsibilities in life,
+a sister and a subaltern.
+
+The sister's name was Patricia Agatha, the subaltern had been born
+Tibbetts, christened Augustus, and named by Hamilton in his arbitrary
+way, "Bones."
+
+Whilst sister and subaltern were separated from one another by some
+three thousand miles of ocean--as far, in fact, as the Coast is from
+Bradlesham Thorpe in the County of Hampshire--Captain Hamilton bore his
+responsibilities without displaying a sense of the burden.
+
+When Patricia Hamilton decided on paying a visit to her brother she did
+so with his heartiest approval, for he did not realize that in bringing
+his two responsibilities face to face he was not only laying the
+foundation of serious trouble, but was actually engaged in erecting the
+fabric.
+
+Pat Hamilton had come and had been boisterously welcomed by her brother
+one white-hot morning, Houssas in undress uniform lining the beach and
+gazing solemnly upon Militini's riotous joy. Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
+C.M.G., had given her a more formal welcome, for he was a little scared
+of women. Bones, as we know, had not been present--which was unfortunate
+in more ways than one.
+
+It made matters no easier for the wretched Bones that Miss Hamilton was
+an exceedingly lovely lady. Men who live for a long time in native lands
+and see little save beautiful figures displayed without art and with
+very little adornment, are apt to regard any white woman with regular
+features as pretty, when the vision comes to them after a long interval
+spent amidst native people. But it needed neither contrast nor
+comparison to induce an admiration for Captain Hamilton's sister.
+
+She was of a certain Celtic type, above the medium height, with the
+freedom of carriage and gait which is the peculiar possession of her
+country-women. Her face was a true oval, and her complexion of that kind
+which tans readily but does not freckle.
+
+Eyes and mouth were firm and steadfast; she was made for ready laughter,
+yet she was deep enough, and in eyes and mouth alike you read a
+tenderness beyond disguise. She had a trinity of admirers: her brother's
+admiration was natural and critical; Sanders admired and feared;
+Lieutenant Tibbetts admired and resented.
+
+From the moment when Bones strode off after the painful discovery, had
+slammed the door of his hut and had steadfastly declined all manner of
+food and sustenance, he had voluntarily cut himself off from his kind.
+
+He met Hamilton on parade the following morning, hollow-eyed (as he
+hoped) after a sleepless night, and there was nothing in his attitude
+suggestive of the deepest respect and the profoundest regard for that
+paragraph of King's Regulations which imposes upon the junior officer a
+becoming attitude of humility in the presence of his superior officer.
+
+"How is your head, Bones?" asked Hamilton, after the parade had been
+dismissed.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Bones bitterly--though why he should be bitter at
+the kindly inquiry only he knew--"thank you, sir, it is about the same.
+My temperature is--or was--up to one hundred and four, and I have been
+delirious. I wouldn't like to say, dear old--sir, that I'm not nearly
+delirious now."
+
+"Come up to tiffin," invited Hamilton.
+
+Bones saluted--a sure preliminary to a dramatic oration.
+
+"Sir," he said firmly, "you've always been a jolly old officer to me
+before this contretemps wrecked my young life--but I shall never be
+quite the same man again, sir."
+
+"Don't be an ass," begged Hamilton.
+
+"Revile me, sir," said Bones dismally; "give me a dangerous mission, one
+of those jolly old adventures where a feller takes his life in one
+hand, his revolver in the other, but don't ask me----"
+
+"My sister wants to see you," said Hamilton, cutting short the flow of
+eloquence.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Bones hollowly, and strode into his hut.
+
+"And what I'm going to do with him, Heaven knows," groaned Hamilton at
+tiffin. "The fact is, Pat, your arrival on the scene has thoroughly
+demoralized him."
+
+The girl folded her serviette and walked to the window, and stood
+looking out over the yellow stretch of the deserted parade-ground.
+
+"I'm going to call on Bones," she said suddenly.
+
+"Poor Bones!" murmured Sanders.
+
+"That's very rude!" She took down her solar helmet from the peg behind
+the door and adjusted it carefully. Then she stepped through the open
+door, whistling cheerfully.
+
+"I hope you don't mind, sir," apologized Hamilton, "but we've never
+succeeded in stopping her habit of whistling."
+
+Sanders laughed.
+
+"It would be strange if she didn't whistle," he said cryptically.
+
+Bones was lying on his back, his hands behind his head. A half-emptied
+tin of biscuits, no less than the remnants of a box of chocolates,
+indicated that anchorite as he was determined to be, his austerity did
+not run in the direction of starvation.
+
+His mind was greatly occupied by a cinematograph procession of
+melancholy pictures. Perhaps he would go away, far, far, into the
+interior. Even into the territory of the great king where a man's life
+is worth about five cents net. And as day by day passed and no news came
+of him--as how could it when his habitation was marked by a cairn of
+stones?--she would grow anxious and unhappy. And presently messengers
+would come bringing her a few poor trinkets he had bequeathed to her--a
+wrist-watch, a broken sword, a silver cigarette-case dented with the
+arrow that slew him--and she would weep silently in the loneliness of
+her room.
+
+And perhaps he would find strength to send a few scrawled words asking
+for her pardon, and the tears would well up in her beautiful grey
+eyes--as they were already welling in Bones's eyes at the picture he
+drew--and she would know--all.
+
+"Phweet!"
+
+Or else, maybe he would be stricken down with fever, and she would want
+to come and nurse him, but he would refuse.
+
+"Tell her," he would say weakly, but oh, so bravely, "tell her ... I ask
+only ... her pardon."
+
+"Phweet!"
+
+Bones heard the second whistle. It came from the open window immediately
+above his head. A song bird was a rare visitor to these parts, but he
+was too lazy and too absorbed to look up.
+
+Perhaps (he resumed) she would never see him again, never know the deep
+sense of injustice....
+
+"Phwee--et!"
+
+It was clearer and more emphatic, and he half turned his head to
+look----
+
+He was on his feet in a second, his hand raised to his damp forehead,
+for leaning on the window sill, her lips pursed for yet another whistle,
+was the lady of his thoughts.
+
+She met his eyes sternly.
+
+"Come outside--misery!" she said, and Bones gasped and obeyed.
+
+"What do you mean," she demanded, "by sulking in your wretched little
+hut when you ought to be crawling about on your hands and knees begging
+my pardon?"
+
+Bones said nothing.
+
+"Bones," said this outrageous girl, shaking her head reprovingly, "you
+want a jolly good slapping!"
+
+Bones extended his bony wrist.
+
+"Slap!" he said defiantly.
+
+He had hardly issued the challenge when a very firm young palm, driven
+by an arm toughened by a long acquaintance with the royal and ancient
+game, came "Smack!" and Bones winced.
+
+"Play the game, dear old Miss Hamilton," he said, rubbing his wrist.
+
+"Play the game yourself, dear old Bones," she mimicked him. "You ought
+to be ashamed of yourself----"
+
+"Let bygones be bygones, jolly old Miss Hamilton," begged Bones
+magnanimously. "And now that I see you're a sport, put it there, if it
+weighs a ton."
+
+And he held out his nobbly hand and caught the girl's in a grip that
+made her grimace.
+
+Five minutes later he was walking her round the married quarters of his
+Houssas, telling her the story of his earliest love affair. She was an
+excellent listener, and seldom interrupted him save to ask if there was
+any insanity in his family, or whether the girl was short-sighted; in
+fact, as Bones afterwards said, it might have been Hamilton himself.
+
+"What on earth are they finding to talk about?" wondered Sanders,
+watching the confidences from the depths of a big cane chair on the
+verandah.
+
+"Bones," replied Hamilton lazily, "is telling her the story of his life
+and how he saved the territories from rebellion. He's also begging her
+not to breathe a word of this to me for fear of hurting my feelings."
+
+At that precise moment Bones was winding up a most immodest recital of
+his accomplishments with a less immodest footnote.
+
+"Of course, dear old Miss Hamilton," he was saying, lowering his voice,
+"I shouldn't like a word of this to come to your jolly old brother's
+ears. He's an awfully good sort, but naturally in competition with an
+agile mind like mine, understanding the native as I do, he hasn't an
+earthly----"
+
+"Why don't you write the story of your adventures?" she asked
+innocently. "It would sell like hot cakes."
+
+Bones choked with gratification.
+
+"Precisely my idea--oh, what a mind you've got! What a pity it doesn't
+run in the family! I'll tell you a precious secret--not a word to
+anybody--honest?"
+
+"Honest," she affirmed.
+
+Bones looked round.
+
+"It's practically ready for the publisher," he whispered, and stepped
+back to observe the effect of his words.
+
+She shook her head in admiration, her eyes were dancing with delight,
+and Bones realized that here at last he had met a kindred soul.
+
+"It must be awfully interesting to write books," she sighed. "I've
+tried--but I can never invent anything."
+
+"Of course, in my case----" corrected Bones.
+
+"I suppose you just sit down with a pen in your hand and imagine all
+sorts of things," she mused, directing her feet to the Residency.
+
+"This is the story of my life," explained Bones earnestly. "Not
+fiction ... but all sorts of adventures that actually happened."
+
+"To whom?" she asked.
+
+"To me," claimed Bones, louder than was necessary.
+
+"Oh!" she said.
+
+"Don't start 'Oh-ing,'" said Bones in a huff. "If you and I are going to
+be good friends, dear old Miss Hamilton, don't say 'Oh!'"
+
+"Don't be a bully, Bones." She turned on him so fiercely that he shrank
+back.
+
+"Play the game," he said feebly; "play the game, dear old sister!"
+
+She led him captive to the stoep and deposited him in the easiest chair
+she could find.
+
+From that day he ceased to be anything but a slave, except on one point.
+
+The question of missions came up at tiffin, and Miss Hamilton revealed
+the fact that she favoured the High Church and held definite views on
+the clergy.
+
+Bones confessed that he was a Wesleyan.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you're a Nonconformist?" she asked
+incredulously.
+
+"That's my dinky little religion, dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones.
+"I'd have gone into the Church only I hadn't enough--enough----"
+
+"Brains?" suggested Hamilton.
+
+"Call is the word," said Bones. "I wasn't called--or if I was I was
+out--haw-haw! That's a rippin' little bit of persiflage, Miss Hamilton?"
+
+"Be serious, Bones," said the girl; "you mustn't joke about things."
+
+She put him through a cross-examination to discover the extent of his
+convictions. In self-defence Bones, with only the haziest idea of the
+doctrine he defended, summarily dismissed certain of Miss Hamilton's
+most precious beliefs.
+
+"But, Bones," she persisted, "if I asked you to change----"
+
+Bones shook his head.
+
+"Dear old friend," he said solemnly, "there are two things I'll never
+do--alter the faith of my distant but happy youth, or listen to one
+disparagin' word about the jolliest old sister that ever----"
+
+"That will do, Bones," she said, with dignity. "I can see that you don't
+like me as I thought you did--what do you think, Mr. Sanders?"
+
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"I can hardly judge--you see," he added apologetically, "I'm a Wesleyan
+too."
+
+"Oh!" said Patricia, and fled in confusion.
+
+Bones rose in silence, crossed to his chief and held out his hand.
+
+"Brother," he said brokenly.
+
+"What the devil are you doing?" snarled Sanders.
+
+"Spoken like a true Christian, dear old Excellency and sir," murmured
+Bones. "We'll bring her back to the fold."
+
+He stepped nimbly to the door, and the serviette ring that Sanders threw
+with unerring aim caught his angular shoulder as he vanished.
+
+That same night Sanders had joyful news to impart. He came into the
+Residency to find Bones engaged in mastering the art of embroidery under
+the girl's tuition.
+
+Sanders interrupted what promised to be a most artistic execution.
+
+"Who says a joy-ride to the upper waters of the Isisi?"
+
+Hamilton jumped up.
+
+"Joy-ride?" he said, puzzled.
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"We leave to-morrow for the Lesser Isisi to settle a religious
+palaver--Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is getting a little too
+enthusiastic a Christian, and Ahmet has been sending some queer reports.
+I've been putting off the palaver for weeks, but Administration says it
+has no objection to my making a picnic of duty--so we'll all go."
+
+"Tri-umph!" said Hamilton. "Bones, leave your needlework and go overhaul
+the stores."
+
+Bones, kneeling on a chair, his elbows on the table, looked up.
+
+"As jolly old Francis Drake said when the Spanish Armada----"
+
+"To the stores, you insubordinate beggar!" commanded Hamilton, and Bones
+made a hurried exit.
+
+The accommodation of the _Zaire_ was limited, but there was the launch,
+a light-draught boat which was seldom used except for tributary work.
+
+"I could put Bones in charge of the _Wiggle_," he said, "but he'd be
+pretty sure to smash her up. Miss Hamilton will have my cabin, and you
+and I could take the two smaller cabins."
+
+Bones, to whom it was put, leapt at the suggestion, brushing aside all
+objections. They were answered before they were framed.
+
+As for the girl, she was beside herself with joy.
+
+"Will there be any fighting?" she asked breathlessly. "Shall we be
+attacked?"
+
+Sanders shook his head smilingly.
+
+"All you have to do," said Bones confidently, "is to stick to me. Put
+your faith in old Bones. When you see the battle swayin' an' it isn't
+certain which way it's goin', look for my jolly old banner wavin' above
+the stricken field."
+
+"And be sure it _is_ his banner," interrupted Hamilton, "and not his
+large feet. Now the last time we had a fight...."
+
+And he proceeded to publish and utter a scandalous libel, Bones
+protesting incoherently the while.
+
+The expedition was on the point of starting when Hamilton took his
+junior aside.
+
+"Bones," he said, not unkindly, "I know you're a whale of a navigator,
+and all that sort of thing, and my sister, who has an awfully keen sense
+of humour, would dearly love to see you at the helm of the _Wiggle_, but
+as the Commissioner wants to make a holiday, I think it would be best if
+you left the steering to one of the boys."
+
+Bones drew himself up stiffly.
+
+"Dear old officer," he said aggrieved, "I cannot think that you wish to
+speak disparagingly of my intelligence----"
+
+"Get that silly idea out of your head," said Hamilton. "That is just
+what I'm trying to do."
+
+"I'm under your jolly old orders, sir," Bones said with the air of an
+early Christian martyr, "and according to Paragraph 156 of King's
+Regulations----"
+
+"Don't let us go into that," said Hamilton. "I'm not giving you any
+commands, I'm merely making a sensible suggestion. Of course, if you
+want to make an ass of yourself----"
+
+"I have never had the slightest inclination that way, cheery old sir,"
+said Bones, "and I'm not likely at my time of life to be influenced by
+my surroundings."
+
+He saluted again and made his way to the barracks. Bones had a
+difficulty in packing his stores. In truth they had all been packed
+before he reached the _Wiggle_, and to an unprofessional eye they were
+packed very well indeed, but Bones had them turned out and packed _his_
+way. When that was done, and it was obvious to the meanest intelligence
+that the _Wiggle_ was in terrible danger of capsizing before she
+started, the stores were unshipped and rearranged under the directions
+of the fuming Hamilton.
+
+When the third packing was completed, the general effect bore a
+striking resemblance to the position of the stores as Bones had found
+them when he came to the boat. When everybody was ready to start, Bones
+remembered that he had forgotten his log-book, and there was another
+wait.
+
+"Have you got everything now?" asked Sanders wearily, leaning over the
+rail.
+
+"Everything, sir," said Bones, with a salute to his superior, and a
+smile to the girl.
+
+"Have you got your hot-water bottle and your hair-curlers?" demanded
+Hamilton offensively.
+
+Bones favoured him with a dignified stare, made a signal to the
+engineer, and the _Wiggle_ started forward, as was her wont, with a jerk
+which put upon Bones the alternative of making a most undignified sprawl
+or clutching a very hot smoke-stack. He chose the latter, recovered his
+balance with an easy grace, punctiliously saluted the tiny flag of the
+_Zaire_ as he whizzed past her, and under the very eyes of Hamilton,
+with all the calmness in the world, took the wheel from the steersman's
+hand and ran the _Wiggle_ ashore.
+
+All this he did in the brief space of three minutes.
+
+"And," said Hamilton, exasperated to a degree, "if you'd only broken
+your infernal head, the accident would have been worth it."
+
+It took half an hour for the _Wiggle_ to get afloat again. She had run
+up the beach, and it was necessary to unload the stores, carry them back
+to the quay and reload her again.
+
+"_Now_ are you ready?" said Sanders.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said Bones, abased but nautical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bucongo, the chief of the Lesser Isisi folk, had a dispute with his
+brother-in-law touching a certain matter which affected his honour. It
+affected his life eventually, since his relative was found one morning
+dead of a spear-thrust. This Sanders discovered after the big trial
+which followed certain events described hereafter.
+
+The brother-in-law in his malice had sworn that Bucongo held communion
+with devils. It is a fact that Bucongo had, at an early age, been
+captured by Catholic missionaries, and had spent an uncomfortable youth
+mastering certain mysterious rites and ceremonies. His brother-in-law
+had been in the blessed service of another missionary who taught that
+God lived in the river, and that to fully benefit by his ju-ju it was
+necessary to be immersed in the flowing stream.
+
+Between the water-God men and the cross-God men there was ever a feud,
+each speaking disparagingly of the other, though converts to each creed
+had this in common, that neither understood completely the faith into
+which they were newly admitted. The advantage lay with the Catholic
+converts because they were given a pewter medal with hearts and sunlike
+radiations engraved thereon (this medal was admittedly a cure for
+toothache and pains in the stomach), whilst the Protestants had little
+beyond a mysterious something that they referred to as A'lamo--which
+means Grace.
+
+But when taunted by their medal-flaunting rivals and challenged to
+produce this "Grace," they were crestfallen and ashamed, being obliged
+to admit that A'lamo was an invisible magic which (they stoutly
+affirmed) was nevertheless an excellent magic, since it preserved one
+from drowning and cured warts and boils.
+
+Bucongo, the most vigorous partisan of the cross-God men, and an
+innovator of ritual, found amusement in watching the Baptist
+missionaries standing knee-deep in the river washing the souls of the
+converts.
+
+He had even been insolent to young Ferguson, the earnest leader of the
+American Baptist Mission, and to his intense amazement had been suddenly
+floored with a left-hander delivered by the sometime Harvard middle
+weight.
+
+He carried his grievance and a lump on his jaw to Mr. Commissioner
+Sanders, who had arrived at the junction of the Isisi and the N'gomi
+rivers and was holding his palaver, and Sanders had been unsympathetic.
+
+"Go worship your God in peace," said Sanders, "and let all other men
+worship theirs; and say no evil word to white men for these are very
+quick to anger. Also it is unbecoming that a black man should speak
+scornfully to his masters."
+
+"Lord," said Bucongo, "in heaven all men are as one, black or white."
+
+"In heaven," said Sanders, "we will settle that palaver, but here on the
+river we hold our places by our merits. To-morrow I come to your village
+to inquire into certain practices of which the God-men know
+nothing--this palaver is finished."
+
+Now Bucongo was something more than a convert. He was a man of singular
+intelligence and of surprising originality. He had been a lay missioner
+of the Church, and had made many converts to a curious religion, the
+ritual of which was only half revealed to the good Jesuit fathers when
+at a great palaver which Bucongo summoned to exhibit his converts, the
+Church service was interspersed with the sacrifice of a goat and a weird
+procession and dance which left the representative of The Order
+speechless. Bucongo was called before a conference of the Mission and
+reprimanded.
+
+He offered excuses, but there was sufficient evidence to prove that this
+enthusiastic Christian had gone systematically to work, to found what
+amounted to a religion of his own.
+
+The position was a little delicate, and any other Order than the Jesuits
+might have hesitated to tackle a reform which meant losing a very large
+membership.
+
+The fate of Bucongo's congregation had been decided when, in his anger,
+he took canoe, and travelling for half a day, came to the principal
+Mission.
+
+Father Carpentier, full-bearded, red of face and brawny of arm, listened
+in the shade of his hut, pulling thoughtfully at a long pipe.
+
+"And so, Pentini," concluded Bucongo, "even Sandi puts shame upon me
+because I am a cross-God man, and he by all accounts is of the water-God
+ju-ju."
+
+The father eyed this perturbed sheep of his flock thoughtfully.
+
+"O Bucongo," he said gently, "in the river lands are many beasts. Those
+which fly and which swim; those that run swiftly and that hide in the
+earth. Now who of these is right?"
+
+"Lord, they are all right but are of different ways," said Bucongo.
+
+Father Carpentier nodded.
+
+"Also in the forest are two ants--one who lives in tree nests, and one
+who has a home deep in the ground. They are of a kind, and have the same
+business. Yet God put it into the little heads of one to climb trees,
+and of the other to burrow deeply. Both are right and neither are wrong,
+save when the tree ant meets the ground ant and fights him. Then both
+are wrong."
+
+The squatting Bucongo rose sullenly.
+
+"Master," he said, "these mysteries are too much for a poor man. I think
+I know a better ju-ju, and to him I go."
+
+"You have no long journey, Chief," said the father sternly, "for they
+tell me stories of ghost dances in the forest and a certain Bucongo who
+is the leader of these--and of a human sacrifice. Also of converts who
+are branded with a cross of hot iron."
+
+The chief looked at his sometime tutor with face twisted and puckered
+with rage, and turning without a word, walked back to his canoe.
+
+The next morning Father Carpentier sent a messenger to Sanders bearing
+an urgent letter, and Sanders read the closely written lines with a
+troubled frown.
+
+He put down the letter and came out on to the deck, to find Hamilton
+fishing over the side of the steamer. Hamilton looked round.
+
+"Anything wrong?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is wrong," said Sanders. "I have heard of
+his religious meetings and have been a little worried--there will be a
+big ju-ju palaver or I'm very much mistaken. Where is Bones?"
+
+"He has taken my sister up the creek--Bones says there are any number of
+egrets' nests there, and I believe he is right."
+
+Sanders frowned again.
+
+"Send a canoe to fetch him back," he said. "That is Bucongo's territory,
+and I don't trust the devil."
+
+"Which one--Bones or Bucongo?" asked Hamilton innocently.
+
+But Sanders was not feeling humorous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that precise moment Bones was sitting before the most fantastic
+religious assembly that ecclesiastic or layman had ever attended.
+
+Fate and Bones had led the girl through a very pleasant forest
+glade--they left the light-draught _Wiggle_ half a mile down stream
+owing to the shoals which barred their progress, and had come upon
+Bucongo in an exalted moment.
+
+With the assurance that he was doing no more than intrude upon one of
+those meetings which the missionizing Chief of the Lesser Isisi so
+frequently held, Bones stood on the outer fringe of the circle which sat
+in silence to watch an unwilling novitiate getting acquainted with
+Bucongo's god.
+
+The novice was a girl, and she lay before an altar of stones surmounted
+by a misshapen _beti_ who glared with his one eye upon the devout
+gathering. The novice lay rigid, for the excellent reason that she was
+roped foot and hands to two pegs in the ground.
+
+Before the altar itself was a fire of wood in which two irons were
+heating.
+
+Bones did not take this in for a moment, for he was gazing open-mouthed
+at Bucongo. On his head was an indubitable mitre, but around the mitre
+was bound a strip of skin from which was suspended a circle of dangling
+monkey tails. For cope he wore a leopard's robe. His face was streaked
+red with camwood, and around his eyes he had painted two white circles.
+
+He was in the midst of a frenzied address when the two white visitors
+came upon the scene, and his hand was outstretched to take the red
+branding-iron when the girl at Bones's side, with a little gasp of
+horror, broke into the circle, and wrenching the rough iron from the
+attendant's hand, flung it towards the circle of spectators, which
+widened in consequence.
+
+"How dare you--how dare you!" she demanded breathlessly, "you
+horrible-looking man!"
+
+Bucongo glared at her but said nothing; then he turned to meet Bones.
+
+In that second of time Bucongo had to make a great decision, and to
+overcome the habits of a lifetime. Training and education to the
+dominion of the white man half raised his hand to the salute; something
+that boiled and bubbled madly and set his shallow brain afire, something
+that was of his ancestry, wild, unreasoning, brutish, urged other
+action. Bones had his revolver half drawn when the knobbly end of the
+chief's killing-spear struck him between the eyes, and he went down on
+his knees.
+
+Thus it came about, that he found himself sitting before Bucongo, his
+feet and hands tied with native grass, with the girl at his side in no
+better case.
+
+She was very frightened, but this she did not show. She had the
+disadvantage of being unable to understand the light flow of offensive
+badinage which passed between her captor and Bones.
+
+"O Tibbetti," said Bucongo, "you see me as a god--I have finished with
+all white men."
+
+"Soon we shall finish with you, Bucongo," said Bones.
+
+"I cannot die, Tibbetti," said the other with easy confidence, "that is
+the wonderful thing."
+
+"Other men have said that," said Bones in the vernacular, "and their
+widows are wives again and have forgotten their widowhood."
+
+"This is a new ju-ju, Tibbetti," said Bucongo, a strange light in his
+eyes. "I am the greatest of all cross-God men, and it is revealed to me
+that many shall follow me. Now you and the woman shall be the first of
+all white people to bear the mark of Bucongo the Blessed. And in the
+days to be you shall bare your breasts and say, 'Bucongo the Wonderful
+did this with his beautiful hands.'"
+
+Bones was in a cold sweat and his mouth was dry. He scarcely dare look
+at the girl by his side.
+
+"What does he say?" she asked in a low voice. Bones hesitated, and then
+haltingly he stammered the translation of the threat.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"O Bucongo," said Bones, with a sudden inspiration, "though you do evil,
+I will endure. But this you shall do and serve me. Brand me alone upon
+the chest, and upon the back. For if we be branded separately we are
+bound to one another, and you see how ugly this woman is with her thin
+nose and her pale eyes; also she has long hair like the grass which the
+weaver birds use for their nests."
+
+He spoke loudly, eagerly, and it seemed convincingly, for Bucongo was in
+doubt. Truly the woman by all standards was very ugly. Her face was
+white and her lips thin. She was a narrow woman too, he thought, like
+one underfed.
+
+"This you shall do for me, Bucongo," urged Bones; "for gods do not do
+evil things, and it would be bad to marry me to this ugly woman who has
+no hips and has an evil tongue."
+
+Bucongo was undecided.
+
+"A god may do no evil," he said; "but I do not know the ways of white
+men. If it be true, then I will mark you twice, Tibbetti, and you shall
+be my man for ever; and the woman I will not touch."
+
+"Cheer oh!" said Bones.
+
+"What are you saying--will he let us go?" asked the girl.
+
+"I was sayin' what a jolly row there'll be," lied Bones; "and he was
+sayin' that he couldn't think of hurtin' a charmin' lady like you. Shut
+your eyes, dear old Miss Hamilton."
+
+She shut them quickly, half fainting with terror, for Bucongo was coming
+towards them, a blazing iron in his hand, a smile of simple benevolence
+upon his not unintelligent face.
+
+"This shall come as a blessing to you, Tibbetti," he said almost
+jovially.
+
+Bones shut his teeth and waited.
+
+The hot iron was scorching his silk shirt when a voice hailed the
+high-priest of the newest of cults.
+
+"O Bucongo," it said.
+
+Bucongo turned with a grimace of fear and cringed backward before the
+levelled Colt of Mr. Commissioner Sanders.
+
+"Tell me now," said Sanders in his even tone, "can such a man as you
+die? Think, Bucongo."
+
+"Lord," said Bucongo huskily, "I think I can die."
+
+"We shall see," said Sanders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not until after dinner that night that the girl had recovered
+sufficiently to discuss her exciting morning.
+
+"I think you were an awful brute," she addressed her unabashed brother.
+"You were standing in the wood listening to and seeing everything, and
+never came till the last minute."
+
+"It was my fault," interrupted Sanders. "I wanted to see how far the
+gentle Bucongo would go."
+
+"Dooced thoughtless," murmured Bones under his breath, but audible.
+
+She looked at him long and earnestly then turned again to her brother.
+
+"There is one thing I want to know," she said. "What was Bones saying
+when he talked to that horrible man? Do you know that Bones was
+scowling at me as though I was ... I hardly know how to express it. Was
+he saying nice things?"
+
+Hamilton looked up at the awning, and cleared his throat.
+
+"Play the game, dear old sir and brother-officer," croaked Bones.
+
+"He said----" began Hamilton.
+
+"Live an' let live," pleaded Bones, all of a twitter. "_Esprit de corps_
+an' discretion, jolly old captain."
+
+Hamilton looked at his subordinate steadily.
+
+"He asked to be branded twice in order that you might not be branded
+once," he said quietly.
+
+The girl stared at Bones, and her eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Oh, Bones!" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you ... you
+are a sportsman."
+
+"Carry on," said Bones incoherently, and wept a little at the
+realization of that magnificent moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MAKER OF STORMS
+
+
+Everybody knows that water drawn from rivers is very bad water, for the
+rivers are the Roads of the Dead, and in the middle of those nights when
+the merest rind of a moon shows, and this slither of light and two
+watchful stars form a triangle pointing to the earth, the spirits rise
+from their graves and walk, "singing deadly songs," towards the lower
+star which is the source of all rivers. If you should be--which God
+forbid--on one of those lonely island graveyards on such nights you will
+see strange sights.
+
+The broken cooking-pots which rest on the mounds and the rent linen
+which flutters from little sticks stuck about the graves, grow whole and
+new again. The pots are red and hot as they come from the fire, and the
+pitiful cloths take on the sheen of youth and fold themselves about
+invisible forms. None may see the dead, though it is said that you may
+see the babies.
+
+These the wise men have watched playing at the water's edge, crowing and
+chuckling in the universal language of their kind, staggering groggily
+along the shelving beach with outspread arms balancing their uncertain
+steps. On such nights when M'sa beckons the dead world to the source of
+all rivers, the middle islands are crowded with babies--the dead babies
+of a thousand years. Their spirits come up from the unfathomed deeps of
+the great river and call their mortality from graves.
+
+"How may the waters of the river be acceptable?" asks the shuddering
+N'gombi mother.
+
+Therefore the N'gombi gather their water from the skies in strange
+cisterns of wicker, lined with the leaf of a certain plant which is
+impervious, and even carry their drinking supplies with them when they
+visit the river itself.
+
+There was a certain month in the year, which will be remembered by all
+who attempted the crossing of the Kasai Forest to the south of the
+N'gombi country, when pools and rivulets suddenly dried--so suddenly,
+indeed, that even the crocodiles, who have an instinct for coming
+drought, were left high and dry, in some cases miles from the nearest
+water, and when the sun rose in a sky unflecked by cloud and gave place
+at nights to a sky so brilliant and so menacing in their fierce and
+fiery nearness that men went mad.
+
+Toward the end of this month, when an exasperating full moon advertised
+a continuance of the dry spell by its very whiteness, the Chief
+Koosoogolaba-Muchini, or, as he was called, Muchini, summoned a council
+of his elder men, and they came with parched throats and fear of death.
+
+"All men know," said Muchini, "what sorrow has come to us, for there is
+a more powerful ju-ju in the land than I remember. He has made M'shimba
+M'shamba afraid so that he has gone away and walks no more in the forest
+with his terrible lightning. Also K'li, the father of pools, has gone
+into the earth and all his little children, and I think we shall die,
+every one of us."
+
+There was a skinny old man, with a frame like a dried goatskin, who made
+a snuffling noise when he spoke.
+
+"O Muchini," he said, "when I was a young man there was a way to bring
+M'shimba M'shamba which was most wonderful. In those days we took a
+young maiden and hung her upon a tree----"
+
+"Those old ways were good," interrupted Muchini; "but I tell you,
+M'bonia, that we can follow no more the old ways since Sandi came to the
+land, for he is a cruel man and hanged my own mother's brother for that
+fine way of yours. Yet we cannot sit and die because of certain magic
+which the Stone Breaker is practising."
+
+Now Bula Matadi ("The Stone Breaker") was in those days the mortal enemy
+of the N'gombi people, who were wont to ascribe all their misfortunes to
+his machinations. To Bula Matadi (which was the generic name by which
+the Government of the Congo Free State was known) was traceable the
+malign perversity of game, the blight of crops, the depredations of
+weaver birds. Bula Matadi encouraged leopards to attack isolated
+travellers, and would on great occasions change the seasons of the year
+that the N'gombi's gardens might come to ruin.
+
+"It is known from one end of the earth to the other that I am a most
+cunning man," Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick of
+self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence; "and whilst even the
+old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini, the son of the terrible and
+crafty G'sombo, the brother of Eleni-N'gombi, I went abroad with my wise
+men and my spies and sought out devils and ghosts in places where even
+the bravest have never been," he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper,
+"to the Ewa-Ewa Mongo, the Very Place of Death."
+
+The gasp of horror from his audience was very satisfying to this little
+chief of the Inner N'gombi, and here was a moment suitable for his
+climax.
+
+"And behold!" he cried.
+
+By his side was something covered with a piece of native cloth. This
+covering he removed with a flourish and revealed a small yellow box.
+
+It was most certainly no native manufacture, for its angles were clamped
+with neat brass corner-pieces set flush in the polished wood.
+
+The squatting councillors watched their lord as with easy familiarity he
+opened the lid.
+
+There were twenty tiny compartments, and in each was a slender glass
+tube, corked and heavily sealed, whilst about the neck of each tube was
+a small white label covered with certain devil marks.
+
+Muchini waited until the sensation he had prepared had had its full
+effect.
+
+"By the Great River which runs to the Allamdani,"[1] he said slowly and
+impressively, "were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi to catch
+ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise men, when the moon was calling all
+spirits. They were gathered by the river with little nets and little
+gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught little flies and
+other foolish things and took them to their tent. Then my young men and
+I waited, and when all were gone away we went to their tents and found
+his magic box--which is full of devils of great power--Ro!"
+
+[Footnote 1: This was evidently the Sanga River.]
+
+He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming. Across the starry dome of the
+sky there had flicked a quick flare of light.
+
+There came a sudden uneasy stirring of leaves, a hushed whisper of
+things as though the forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.
+
+Then an icy cold breeze smote his cheek, and staring upward, he saw the
+western stars disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.
+
+"M'shimba M'shamba--he lives!" he roared, and the crash of thunder in
+the forest answered him.
+
+Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was on the furthermost edge of the forest,
+for he was following the impulse of his simple nature and was hunting in
+a country where he had no right to be. The storm (which he cursed,
+having no scruples about river and water, and being wholly sceptical as
+to ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed. Two nights
+later, he sat before the rough hut his men had built, discussing the
+strange ways of the antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened,
+lowering his head till it almost touched the ground.
+
+Clear to his keen ears came the rattle of the distant lokali--the drum
+that sends messages from village to village and from nation to nation.
+
+"O Secundi," said Bosambo, with a note of seriousness in his voice, "I
+have not heard that call for many moons--for it is the war call of the
+N'gombi."
+
+"Lord, it is no war call," said the old man, shifting his feet for
+greater comfort, "yet it is a call which may mean war, for it calls
+spears to a dance, and it is strange, for the N'gombi have no enemies."
+
+"All men are the enemies of the N'gombi," Bosambo quoted a river saying
+as old as the sun.
+
+He listened again, then rose.
+
+"You shall go back and gather me a village of spears, and bring them to
+the borderland near the road that crosses the river," he said.
+
+"On my life," said the other.
+
+Muchini, Chief of the Inner N'gombi, a most inflated man and a familiar
+of magical spirits, gathered his spears to some purpose, for two days
+later Bosambo met him by his border and the chiefs greeted one another
+between two small armies.
+
+"Which way do you go, Muchini?" asked Bosambo.
+
+Now, between Muchini and the Chief of the Ochori was a grievance dating
+back to the big war, when Bosambo had slain the N'gombi chief of the
+time with his own hands.
+
+"I go to the river to call a palaver of all free men," said Muchini;
+"for I tell you this, Bosambo, that I have found a great magic which
+will make us greater than Sandi, and it has been prophesied that I shall
+be a king over a thousand times a thousand spears. For I have a small
+box which brings even M'shimba to my call."
+
+Bosambo, a head and shoulders taller than the other, waved his hand
+towards the forest path which leads eventually to the Ochori city.
+
+"Here is a fine moment for you, Muchini," he said, "and you shall try
+your great magic on me and upon my young men. For I say that you do not
+go by this way, neither you nor your warriors, since I am the servant of
+Sandi and of his King, and he has sent me here to keep his peace; go
+back to your village, for this is the way to Death."
+
+Muchini glared at his enemy.
+
+"Yet this way I go, Bosambo," he said huskily, and looked over his
+shoulder towards his followers.
+
+Bosambo swung round on one heel, an arm and a leg outstretched in the
+attitude of an athlete who is putting the shot. Muchini threw up his
+wicker shield and pulled back his stabbing-spear, but he was a dead man
+before the weapon was poised.
+
+Thus ended the war, and the N'gombi folk went home, never so much as
+striking a blow for the yellow box which Bosambo claimed for himself as
+his own personal loot.
+
+At the time, Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., was blissfully ignorant
+of the miraculous happenings which have been recorded. He was wholly
+preoccupied by the novelty which the presence of Patricia Hamilton
+offered. Never before had a white woman made her home at the Residency,
+and it changed things a little.
+
+She was at times an embarrassment.
+
+When Fubini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava, despatched five maidens to
+change Sandi's wicked heart--Sanders had sent Fubini to the Village of
+Irons for six months for preaching unauthorized magic--they came, in the
+language of Bones, "doocedly undressed," and Patricia had beaten a
+hurried retreat.
+
+She was sometimes an anxiety, as I have already shown, but was never a
+nuisance. She brought to headquarters an aroma of English spring, a
+clean fragrance that refreshed the heat-jaded Commissioner and her
+brother, but which had no perceptible influence upon Bones.
+
+That young officer called for her one hot morning, and Hamilton,
+sprawling on a big cane chair drawn to the shadiest and breeziest end of
+the verandah, observed that Bones carried a wooden box, a drawing-board,
+a pad of paper, two pencils imperfectly concealed behind his large ear,
+and a water-bottle.
+
+"Shop!" said Hamilton lazily. "Forward, Mr. Bones--what can we do for
+you this morning?"
+
+Bones shaded his eyes and peered into the cool corner.
+
+"Talkin' in your sleep, dear old Commander," he said pleasantly,
+"dreamin' of the dear old days beyond recall."
+
+He struck an attitude and lifted his unmusical voice--
+
+     "When life was gay, heigho!
+     Tum tum te tay, heigho!
+     Oh, tiddly umpty humpty umty do,
+     When life was gay--dear old officer--heigho!"
+
+Patricia Hamilton stepped out to the verandah in alarm.
+
+"Oh, please, don't make that hooting noise," she appealed to her
+brother. "I'm writing----"
+
+"Don't be afraid," said Hamilton, "it was only Bones singing. Do it
+again, Bones, Pat didn't hear you."
+
+Bones stood erect, his hand to his white helmet.
+
+"Come aboard, my lady," he said.
+
+"I won't keep you a minute, Bones," said the girl, and disappeared into
+the house.
+
+"What are you doing this morning?" asked Hamilton, gazing with
+pardonable curiosity at the box and drawing-board.
+
+"Polishin' up my military studies with Miss Hamilton's kind
+assistance--botany and applied science, sir," said Bones briskly. "Field
+fortifications, judgin' distance, strategy, Bomongo grammar, field
+cookery an' tropical medicines."
+
+"What has poor little making-up-company-accounts done?" asked Hamilton,
+and Bones blushed.
+
+"Dear old officer," he begged, "I'll tackle that little job as soon as I
+get back. I tried to do 'em this mornin' an was four dollars out--it's
+the regimental cash account that's wrong. People come in and out helpin'
+themselves, and I positively can't keep track of the money."
+
+"As I'm the only person with the key of the regimental cash-box, I
+suppose you mean----?"
+
+Bones raised his hand.
+
+"I make no accusations, dear old feller--it's a painful subject. We all
+have those jolly old moments of temptation. I tackle the accounts
+to-night, sir. You mustn't forget that I've a temperament. I'm not like
+you dear old wooden-heads----"
+
+"Oh, shut up," said the weary Hamilton. "So long as you're going to do a
+bit of study, it's all right."
+
+"Now, Bones," said Patricia, appearing on the scene, "have you got the
+sandwiches?"
+
+Bones made terrifying and warning grimaces.
+
+"Have you got the board to lay the cloth and the paper to cover it, and
+the chocolates and the cold tea?"
+
+Bones frowned, and jerked his head in an agony of warning.
+
+"Come on, then," said the unconscious betrayer of Lieutenant Tibbetts.
+"Good-bye, dear."
+
+"Why 'good-bye,' dear old Hamilton's sister?" asked Bones.
+
+She looked at him scornfully and led the way.
+
+"Don't forget the field fortifications," called Hamilton after them;
+"they eat nicely between slices of strategy."
+
+The sun was casting long shadows eastward when they returned. They
+had not far to come, for the place they had chosen for their picnic
+was well within the Residency reservation, but Bones had been describing
+on his way back one of the remarkable powers he possessed, namely, his
+ability to drag the truth from reluctant and culpable natives. And every
+time he desired to emphasize the point he would stop, lower all his
+impedimenta to the ground, cluttering up the landscape with picnic-box,
+drawing-board, sketching-blocks and the numerous bunches of wild
+flowers he had culled at her request, and press his argument with
+much palm-punching.
+
+He stopped for the last time on the very edge of the barrack square, put
+down his cargo and proceeded to demolish the doubt she had unwarily
+expressed.
+
+"That's where you've got an altogether erroneous view of me, dear old
+sister," he said triumphantly. "I'm known up an' down the river as the
+one man that you can't deceive. Go up and ask the Bomongo, drop in on
+the Isisi, speak to the Akasava, an' what will they say? They'll say,
+'No, ma'am, there's no flies on jolly old Bones--not on your life,
+Harriet!'"
+
+"Then they would be very impertinent," smiled Pat.
+
+"Ask Sanders (God bless him!). Ask Ham. Ask----" he was going on
+enthusiastically.
+
+"Are you going to camp here, or are you coming in?" she challenged.
+
+Bones gathered up his belongings, never ceasing to talk.
+
+"Fellers like me, dear young friend, make the Empire--paint the whole
+bally thing red, white an' blue--'unhonoured an' unsung, until the
+curtain's rung, the boys that made the Empire and the Navy.'"
+
+"Bones, you promised you wouldn't sing," she said reproachfully; "and,
+besides, you're not in the navy."
+
+"That doesn't affect the argument," protested Bones, and was rapidly
+shedding his equipment in preparation for another discourse, when she
+walked on towards Sanders who had come across the square to meet them.
+
+Bones made a dive at the articles he had dropped, and came prancing (no
+other word describes his erratic run) up to Sanders.
+
+"I've just been telling Miss Hamilton, sir and Excellency, that nobody
+can find things that old Bones--you'll remember, sir, the episode of
+your lost pyjama legs. Who found 'em?"
+
+"You did," said Sanders; "they were sent home in your washing. Talking
+about finding things, read this."
+
+He handed a telegraph form to the young man, and Bones, peering into the
+message until his nose almost touched the paper, read--
+
+     "Very urgent. Clear the line. Administration.
+
+     "To Sanders, Commission River Territories. Message begins. Belgian
+     Congo Government reports from Leopoldville, Bacteriological
+     Expedition carriers raided on edge of your territory by Inner
+     N'gombi people, all stores looted including case of 20 culture
+     tubes. Stop. As all these cultures are of virulent diseases,
+     inoculate Inner N'gombi until intact tubes recovered. Message
+     ends."
+
+Bones read it twice, and his face took on an appearance which indicated
+something between great pain and intense vacancy. It was intended to
+convey to the observer the fact that Bones was thinking deeply and
+rapidly, and that he had banished from his mind all the frivolities of
+life.
+
+"I understand, sir--you wish me to go to the dear old Congo Government
+and apologize--I shall be ready in ten minutes."
+
+"What I really want you to do," said Sanders patiently, "is to take the
+_Wiggle_ up stream and get that box."
+
+"I quite understand, sir," said Bones, nodding his head. "To-day is the
+8th, to-morrow is the 9th--the box shall be in your hands on the 15th by
+half-past seven in the evening, dear old sir."
+
+He saluted and turned a baleful glare upon the girl, the import of which
+she was to learn at first hand.
+
+"Duty, Miss Patricia Hamilton! Forgive poor old Bones if he suddenly
+drops the mask of _dolce far niente_--I go!"
+
+He saluted again and went marching stiffly to his quarters, with all the
+dignity which an empty lunch-box and a dangling water-bottle would allow
+him.
+
+The next morning Bones went forth importantly for the Ochori city, being
+entrusted with the task of holding, so to speak, the right flank of the
+N'gombi country.
+
+"You will use your discretion," Sanders said at parting, "and, of
+course, you must keep your eyes open; if you hear the merest hint that
+the box is in your neighbourhood, get it."
+
+"I think, your Excellency," said Bones, with heavy carelessness, "that
+I have fulfilled missions quite as delicate as this, and as for
+observation, why, the gift runs in my family."
+
+"And runs so fast that you've never caught up with it," growled
+Hamilton.
+
+Bones turned haughtily and saluted. It was a salute full of subdued
+offence.
+
+He went joyously to the northward, evolving cunning plans. He stopped
+at every village to make inquiries and to put the unoffending villagers
+to considerable trouble--for he insisted upon a house-to-house
+search--before, somewhat wearied by his own zeal, he came to the Ochori.
+
+Chief Bosambo heard of his coming and summoned his councillors.
+
+"Truly has Sandi a hundred ears," he said in dismay, "for it seems that
+he has heard of the slaying of Muchini. Now, all men who are true to me
+will swear to the lord Tibbetti that we know nothing of a killing
+palaver, and that we have not been beyond the trees to the land side of
+the city. This you will all say because you love me; and if any man says
+another thing I will beat him until he is sick."
+
+Bones came and was greeted by the chief--and Bosambo was carried to the
+beach on a litter.
+
+"Lord," said Bosambo weakly, "now the sight of your simple face will
+make me a well man again. For, lord, I have not left my bed since the
+coming of the rains, and there is strength neither in my hands and
+feet."
+
+"Poor old bird," said Bones sympathetically, "you've been sittin' in a
+draught."
+
+"This I tell you, Tibbetti," Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his
+ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ
+English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I
+have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing,
+being like a dead man--all this my headman will testify."
+
+Bones's face dropped, for he had hoped to secure information here.
+Bosambo, watching his face through half-closed lids, saw the dismal
+droop of the other's mouth, and came to the conclusion that whatever
+might be the cause of the visit, it was not to hold the Ochori or their
+chief to account for known misdeeds.
+
+"O Bosambo," said Bones, in the river dialect, "this is sad news, for I
+desire that you shall tell me certain things for which Sandi would have
+given you salt and rods."
+
+The Chief of the Ochori sat up in his litter and went so far as to put
+one foot to the ground.
+
+"Lord," said he heartily, "the sound of your lovely voice brings me from
+the grave and gives me strength. Ask, O Bonesi, for you are my father
+and my mother; and though I saw and heard nothing, yet in my sickness I
+had wonderful visions and all things were made visible--that I declare
+to you, Bonesi, before all men."
+
+"Don't call me 'Bonesi,'" said Bones fiercely. "You're a jolly cheeky
+feller, Bosambo--you're very, very naughty, indeed!"
+
+"Master," said Bosambo humbly, "though I rule these Ochori I am a
+foreigner in this land; in the tongue of my own people, Bonesi means
+'he-who-is-noble-in-face-and-a-giver-of-justice.'"
+
+"That's better," nodded the gratified Bones, and went on speaking in the
+dialect. "You shall help me in this--it touches the people of the Inner
+N'gombi----"
+
+Bosambo fell back wearily on to the litter, and rolled his eyes as one
+in pain.
+
+"This is a sorrow for me, Bo--Tibbetti," he said faintly, "but I am a
+sick man."
+
+"Also," continued Bones, "of a certain box of wood, full of poisons----"
+
+As well as he could Bones explained the peculiar properties of germ
+culture.
+
+"Oh, ko!" said Bosambo, closing his eyes, and was to all appearances
+beyond human aid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Lord," said Bosambo, at parting, "you have brought me to life, and
+every man of every tribe shall know that you are a great healer. To all
+the far and quiet places of the forest I will send my young men who will
+cry you aloud as a most wonderful doctor."
+
+"Not at all," murmured Bones modestly, "not at all."
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, this time in English, for he was not to be
+outdone in the matter of languages, for had he not attended a great
+mission school in Monrovia? "Master, you dam' fine feller, you look 'um
+better feller, you no find um. You be same like Moses and Judi Escariot,
+big fine feller, by golly--yas."
+
+All night long, between the visits which Bones had been making from the
+moored _Wiggle_ to the village (feeling the patient's pulse with a
+profound and professional air and prescribing brandy and milk), Bosambo
+had been busy.
+
+"Stand you at the door, Secundi," he said to his headman, "and let one
+of your men go to the shore to warn me of my lord Tibbetti's coming, for
+I have work to do. It seems this Maker of Storms were better with Sandi
+than with me."
+
+"Tibbetti is a fool, I think," suggested Secundi.
+
+Bosambo, kneeling on a rush mat, busy with a native chisel and a pot of
+clay paint, looked up.
+
+"I have beaten older men than you with a stick until they have wept," he
+said, "and all for less than you say. For this is the truth, Secundi,
+that a child cannot be a fool, though an old man may be a shame. This is
+the word of the blessed prophet. As for Tibbetti, he has a clean and
+loving heart."
+
+There was a rustle at the door and a whispered voice.
+
+The box and the tools were thrust under a skin rug and Bosambo again
+became the interesting invalid.
+
+In the morning Bosambo had said farewell, and a blushing Bones listened
+with unconcealed pleasure to the extravagant praise of his patient.
+
+"And this I tell you, Tibbetti," said Bosambo, standing thigh-deep in
+the river by the launch's side, "that knowing you are wise man who
+gathers wisdom, I have sent to the end of my country for some rare and
+beautiful thing that you may carry it with you."
+
+He signalled to a man on the bank, and his servant brought him a curious
+object.
+
+It was, Bones noted, a square box apparently of native make, for it was
+fantastically carved and painted. There were crude heads and hideous
+forms which never were on land or sea. The paint was brilliant; red,
+yellow and green indiscriminately splashed.
+
+"This is very ancient and was brought to my country by certain forest
+people. It is a Maker of Storms, and is a powerful ju-ju for good and
+evil."
+
+Bones, already a collector of native work, was delighted. His delight
+soothed him for his failure in other respects.
+
+He returned to headquarters empty-handed and sat the centre of a
+chilling group--if we except Patricia Hamilton--and endeavoured, as so
+many successful advocates have done, to hide his short-comings behind a
+screen of rhetoric.
+
+He came to the part of his narrative where Bosambo was taken ill without
+creating any notable sensation, save that Sanders's grey eyes narrowed
+a little and he paid greater heed to the rest of the story.
+
+"There was poor old Bosambo knocked out, sir--ab-so-lutely done
+for--fortunately I did not lose my nerve. You know what I am, dear old
+officer, in moments of crisis?"
+
+"I know," said Hamilton grimly, "something between a Welsh revivalist
+and a dancing dervish."
+
+"Please go on, Bones," begged the girl, not the least interested of the
+audience.
+
+"I dashed straight back to the _Wiggle_," said Bones breathlessly,
+"searched for my medicine chest--it wasn't there! Not so much as a
+mustard plaster--what was I to do, dear old Miss Hamilton?" he appealed
+dramatically.
+
+"Don't tell him, Pat," begged Hamilton, "he's sure to guess it."
+
+"What was I to do? I seized a bottle of brandy," said Bones with relish,
+"I dashed back to where Bosambo was lyin'. I dashed into the village,
+into his hut and got a glass----"
+
+"Well, well!" said Sanders impatiently, "what happened after all this
+dashing?"
+
+Bones spread out his hands.
+
+"Bosambo is alive to-day," he said simply, "praisin'--if I may be
+allowed to boast--the name of Bones the Medicine Man. Look here, sir."
+
+He dragged towards him along the floor of the hut a package covered with
+a piece of native sacking. This he whisked away and revealed the
+hideous handiwork of an artist who had carved and painted as true to
+nature as a man may who is not quite certain whether the human eye is
+half-way down the nose or merely an appendage to his ear.
+
+"That, sir," said Bones impressively, "is one of the most interestin'
+specimens of native work I have ever seen: a gift! From Bosambo to the
+jolly old doctor man who dragged him, if I might so express it, from the
+very maws of death."
+
+He made his dramatic pause.
+
+Sanders bent down, took a penknife from his pocket and scraped the paint
+from a flat oblong space on the top.
+
+There for all men to see--save Bones who was now engaged in a relation
+of his further adventure to his one sympathizer--was a brass plate, and
+when the paint had been scraped away, an inscription--
+
+     Department du Medicins, Etat CONGO BELGE.
+
+Sanders and Hamilton gazed, fascinated and paralysed to silence.
+
+"I've always had a feelin' I'd like to be a medicine man." Bones
+prattled on. "You see----"
+
+"One moment, Bones," interrupted Sanders quietly. "Did you open this box
+by any chance?"
+
+"No, sir," said Bones.
+
+"And did you see any of its contents?"
+
+"No, sir," said Bones confidentially, "that's the most interestin' thing
+about the box. It contains magic--which, of course, honoured sir and
+Excellency, is all rubbish."
+
+Sanders took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after a few trials
+opened the case and scrutinized the contents, noting the comforting fact
+that all the tubes were sealed. He heaved a deep sigh of thankfulness.
+
+"You didn't by chance discover anything about the missing cultures,
+Bones?" he asked mildly.
+
+Bones shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and looked disconsolately
+at his chief.
+
+"You think I've been feeble, but I haven't lost hope, sir," he said,
+with fine resolution. "I've got a feelin' that if I were allowed to go
+into the forest, disguised, sir, as a sort of half-witted native chap,
+sir----"
+
+"Disguised!" said Hamilton. "Good Lord, what do you want a disguise
+for?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BONES AND THE WIRELESS
+
+
+Ko-boru, the headman of Bingini, called his relations together for a
+solemn family conference.
+
+The lower river folk play an inconsiderable role in the politics of the
+Territories, partly because they are so near to headquarters that there
+is no opportunity for any of those secret preparations which precede all
+native intrigues, great or small, and partly because the lower river
+people are so far removed from the turbulent elements of the upper river
+that they are not swayed by the cyclonic emotions of the Isisi, the cold
+and deliberate desire for slaughter which is characteristically
+Akasavian, or the electrical decisions of the Outer N'gombi.
+
+But they had their crises.
+
+To Bingini came all the notables of the district who claimed kinship
+with Ko-boru, and they sat in a great circle about the headman's hut,
+alternately eyeing the old headman and their stout relative, his
+daughter.
+
+"All my relations shall know this," began Ko-boru, after Okmimi, the
+witch-doctor, had formally burnt away the devils and ghosts that fringe
+all large assemblies, "that a great shame has come to us, every one,
+because of Yoka-m'furi. For this Yoka is to Sandi as a brother, and
+guides his little ship up and down the river, and because of this
+splendid position I gave him my own daughter by the first of my wives."
+
+"S'm-m!" murmured the council in agreement.
+
+"Also I built him a hut and gave him a garden, where his wife might
+work, and he has sat at family palavers. Now, I tell you that
+Yoka-m'furi is an evil man, for he has left my daughter, and has found
+another wife in the upper river, and he comes no more to this village,
+and my daughter weeps all day.
+
+"For three seasons he has not been to this village; when the moon comes
+again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the
+flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased
+miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe.
+
+For the man who deliberately separates himself from his wife for
+four seasons and does not spend twenty-four hours--"from sunrise to
+moonset" in her village is automatically divorced and freed from all
+responsibility. This is the custom of all people from the lands of
+the Great King to the sea.
+
+"Now, I have had a dream," Ko-boru went on, "and in this dream it was
+told me that I should call you all together, and that I and the chief of
+my councillors and friends should go to Sandi and tell him what is
+true."
+
+"Brother and uncle," said Bechimi of G'lara, "I will go with you, for
+once I spoke to Sandi and he spoke to me, and because of his cunning
+memory he will recall Bechimi, who picked up his little black stick,
+when it fell, and gave it to him."
+
+Five were chosen to accompany Ko-boru, and they took canoe and travelled
+for less than five miles to the Residency.
+
+Sanders was entertaining Patricia Hamilton with stories of native feuds,
+when the unexpected deputation squatted in the sun before the verandah.
+
+"O Ko-boru," hailed Sanders, "why do you come?"
+
+Ko-boru was all for a long and impressive palaver, but recognized a
+certain absence of encouragement in the Commissioner's tone. Therefore
+he came straight to the point.
+
+"Now, you are our father and our mother, Sandi," he said, in conclusion,
+"and when you speak, all wonders happen. Also you have very beautiful
+friends, Militini, who speak a word and set his terrible soldiers moving
+like leopards towards a kill, and Tibbetti, the young one who is
+innocent and simple. So I say to you, Sandi, that if you speak one word
+to Yoka, he will come back to my daughter, his wife."
+
+Sanders stood by the rail of the stoep and looked down upon the
+spokesman.
+
+"I hear strange things, Ko-boru," he said quietly. "They tell me stories
+of a woman with many lovers and an evil tongue; and once there came to
+me Yoka with a wounded head, for this daughter of yours is very quick in
+her anger."
+
+"Lord," said the flustered Ko-boru, "such things happen even in love."
+
+"All things happen in love," said Sanders, with a little smile, "and, if
+it is to be, Yoka will return. Also, if it is to be, he will not go back
+to the woman, and she will be free. This palaver is finished."
+
+"Lord," pleaded Ko-boru, "the woman will do no more angry things. Let
+him come back from sunrise to moonset----"
+
+"This palaver is finished," repeated Sanders.
+
+On their way back to Bingini the relatives of Ko-boru made a plot. It
+was the first plot that had been hatched in the shadow of headquarters
+for twenty years.
+
+"Would it be indiscreet to ask what your visitors wanted?" asked the
+girl, as the crestfallen deputation was crossing the square to their
+canoe.
+
+"It was a marriage palaver," replied Sanders, with a little grimace,
+"and I was being requested to restore a husband to a temperamental lady
+who has a passion for shying cook-pots at her husband when she is
+annoyed."
+
+The girl's laughing eyes were fixed upon his.
+
+"Poor Mr. Sanders!" she said, with mock seriousness.
+
+"Don't be sorry for me," smiled Sanders. "I'm rather domestic, really,
+and I'm interested in this case because the man concerned is my
+steersman--the best on the river, and a capital all-round man. Besides
+that," he went on seriously, "I regard them all as children of mine. It
+is right that a man who shirks his individual responsibilities to the
+race should find a family to 'father.'"
+
+"Why do you?" she asked, after a little pause.
+
+"Why do I what?"
+
+"Shirk your responsibilities," she said. "This is a healthy and a
+delightful spot: a woman might be very happy here."
+
+There was an awkward silence.
+
+"I'm afraid I've been awfully impertinent," said Patricia, hurriedly
+rising, "but to a woman there is a note of interrogation behind every
+bachelor--especially nice bachelors--and the more 'confirmed' he is, the
+bigger the question mark."
+
+Sanders rose to her.
+
+"One of these days I shall do something rash," he threatened, with that
+shy laugh of his. "Here is your little family coming."
+
+Bones and Hamilton were discussing something heatedly, and justice was
+on the side of Lieutenant Tibbetts, if one could judge by the frequency
+with which he stopped and gesticulated.
+
+"It really is too bad," said the annoyed Hamilton, as he mounted the
+steps to the stoep, followed by Bones, who, to do him justice, did not
+adopt the attitude of a delinquent, but was, on the contrary, injured
+virtue personified.
+
+"What is too bad, dear?" asked the girl sympathetically.
+
+"A fortnight ago," said Hamilton, "I told this silly ass----"
+
+"Your jolly old brother is referrin' to me, dear lady," explained Bones.
+
+"Who else could I be referring to?" demanded the other truculently. "I
+told him to have all the company accounts ready by to-morrow. You know,
+sir, that the paymaster is coming down from Administration to check 'em,
+and will you believe me, sir"--he glared at Bones, who immediately
+closed his eyes resignedly--"would you believe me that, when I went to
+examine those infernal accounts, they were all at sixes and sevens?"
+
+"Threes an' nines, dear old officer," murmured Bones, waking up, "the
+matter in dispute being a trifle of thirty-nine dollars, which I've
+generously offered to make up out of my own pocket."
+
+He beamed round as one who expected applause.
+
+"And on the top of this," fumed Hamilton, "he talks of taking Pat for an
+early morning picnic to the village island!"
+
+"Accompanied by the jolly old accounts," corrected Bones. "Do me
+justice, sir and brother-officer. I offered to take the books with me,
+an' render a lucid and convincin' account of my stewardship."
+
+"Don't make me laugh," snarled Hamilton, stamping into the bungalow.
+
+"Isn't he naughty?" said Bones admiringly.
+
+"Now, Bones," warned the girl, "I shan't go unless you keep your word
+with Alec."
+
+Bones drew himself up and saluted.
+
+"Dear old friend," he said proudly, "put your faith in Bones."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"H.M. Launch No. 36 (Territories)," as it was officially described on
+the stores record, had another name, which she earned in her early days
+through certain eccentricities of construction. Though she might not in
+justice be called the _Wiggle_ any longer, yet the _Wiggle_ she was from
+one end of the river to the other, and even native men called her
+"Komfuru," which means "that which does not run straight."
+
+It had come to be recognized that the _Wiggle_ was the especial charge
+of Lieutenant Tibbetts. Bones himself was the first to recognize this
+right. There were moments when he inferred that the _Wiggle's_ arrival
+on the station at the time he was making his own first appearance was
+something more than a coincidence.
+
+She was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a launch, for she
+possessed a square, open dining saloon and two tiny cabins amidships.
+Her internal works were open to the light of day, and her engineer
+lived in the engine-room up to his waist and on deck from his waist up,
+thus demonstrating the possibility of being in two places at once.
+
+The _Wiggle_, moreover, possessed many attributes which are denied to
+other small steamers. She had, for example, a Maxim gun on her tiny
+forecastle. She had a siren of unusual power and diabolical tone, she
+was also fitted with a big motor-horn, both of which appendages were
+Bones's gift to his flagship. The motor-horn may seem superfluous, but
+when the matter is properly explained, you will understand the necessity
+for some less drastic method of self-advertisement than the siren.
+
+The first time the siren had been fitted Bones had taken the _Wiggle_
+through "the Channel." Here the river narrows and deepens, and the
+current runs at anything from five to seven knots an hour. Bones was
+going up stream, and met the Bolalo Mission steamer coming down. She had
+dipped her flag to the _Wiggle's_ blue ensign, and Bones had replied
+with two terrific blasts on his siren.
+
+After that the _Wiggle_ went backwards, floating with the current all
+ways, from broadside on to stern first, for in those two blasts Bones
+had exhausted the whole of his steam reserve.
+
+She was also equipped with wireless. There was an "aerial" and an
+apparatus which Bones had imported from England at a cost of twelve
+pounds, and which was warranted to receive messages from two hundred
+miles distant. There was also a book of instructions. Bones went to his
+hut with the book and read it. His servant found him in bed the next
+morning, sleeping like a child, with his hand resting lightly upon the
+second page.
+
+Sanders and Hamilton both took a hand at fixing the _Wiggle's_ wireless.
+The only thing they were all quite certain about was that there ought to
+be a wire somewhere. So they stretched the aerial from the funnel to the
+flagstaff at the stern of the boat, and then addressed themselves to the
+less simple solution of "making it work."
+
+They tried it for a week, and gave it up in despair.
+
+"They've had you, Bones," said Hamilton. "It doesn't 'went.' Poor old
+Bones!"
+
+"Your pity, dear old officer, is offensive," said Bones stiffly, "an' I
+don't mind tellin' you that I've a queer feelin'--I can't explain what
+it is, except that I'm a dooce of a psychic--that that machine is goin'
+to be jolly useful."
+
+But though Bones worked day and night, read the book of instructions
+from cover to cover, and took the whole apparatus to pieces, examining
+each part under a strong magnifying glass, he never succeeded either in
+transmitting or receiving a message, and the machine was repacked and
+stored in the spare cabin, and was never by any chance referred to,
+except by Hamilton in his most unpleasant moments.
+
+Bones took an especial delight in the _Wiggle_; it was his very own
+ship, and he gave her his best personal attention.
+
+It was Bones who ordered from London especially engraved notepaper
+headed "H. M. S. _Komfuru_"--the native name sounded more dignified than
+_Wiggle_, and more important than "Launch 36." It was Bones who
+installed the little dynamo which--when it worked--lit the cabins and
+even supplied power for a miniature searchlight. It was Bones who had
+her painted Service grey, and would have added another funnel if
+Hamilton had not detected the attempted aggrandizement. Bones claimed
+that she was dustproof, waterproof, and torpedo-proof, and Hamilton had
+voiced his regret that she was not also fool-proof.
+
+At five o'clock the next morning, when the world was all big hot stars
+and shadows, and there was no sound but the whisper of the running river
+and the "ha-a-a-a--ha-a-a-a" of breakers, Bones came from his hut,
+crossed the parade-ground, and, making his way by the light of a lantern
+along the concrete quay--it was the width of an average table--dropped
+on to the deck and kicked the custodian of the _Wiggle_ to wakefulness.
+
+Bones's satellite was one Ali Abid, who was variously described as Moor,
+Egyptian, Tripolitan, and Bedouin, but was by all ethnological
+indications a half-breed Kano, who had spent the greater part of his
+life in the service of a professor of bacteriology. This professor was
+something of a purist, and the association with Ali Abid, plus a
+grounding in the elementary subjects which are taught at St. Joseph's
+Mission School, Cape Coast Castle, had given Ali a gravity of demeanour
+and a splendour of vocabulary which many better favoured than he might
+have envied.
+
+"Arise," quoth Bones, in the cracked bass which he employed whenever he
+felt called upon to deliver his inaccurate versions of Oriental poets--
+
+     "Arise, for morning in the bowl of night
+     Has chucked a stone to put the stars to flight.
+     And lo! and lo!... Get up, Ali; the caravan is moving.
+     Oh, make haste!"
+
+("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once
+said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!")
+
+Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold,
+and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones
+had donated.
+
+"Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck.
+
+"Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your
+preliminary instructions presupposed that you had made necessary
+arrangements _re personnel_."
+
+Bones scratched his head.
+
+"Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I
+was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly
+old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue
+explicit an' particular instructions about grub?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "you didn't."
+
+"Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, when enjoying refreshing coma, possess
+delirium, hallucinations, highly imaginative, which dissipate when the
+subject recovers consciousness, but retain in brain cavity illusory
+reminiscences."
+
+Bones thrust his face into the other's.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me I dreamt it?" he hissed.
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "self-preservation compels complete acquiescence in
+your diagnosis."
+
+"You're childish," said Bones.
+
+He gave a few vague instructions in the best Bones manner, and stole up
+to the dark Residency. He had solemnly promised Sanders that he would
+rouse the girl without waking up the rest of the house.
+
+They were to go up stream to the Village Island, where the ironworkers
+of the Akasava had many curious implements to show her. Breakfast was
+to be taken on the boat, and they were to return for tiffin.
+
+Overnight she had shown Bones the window of her room, and Hamilton had
+offered to make a chalk mark on the sash, so there could be no mistaking
+the situation of the room.
+
+"If you wake me before sunrise, I shall do something I shall be sorry
+for," he warned Bones. "If you return without straightening the
+accounts, I shall do something which _you_ will be sorry for."
+
+Bones remembered this as he crept stealthily along the wooden verandah.
+To make doubly sure, he took off his boots and dropped them with a
+crash.
+
+"Sh!" said Bones loudly. "Sh, Bones! Not so much noise, you silly old
+ass!"
+
+He crept softly along the wooden wall and reconnoitred. The middle
+window was Hamilton's room, the left was Sanders's, the right was
+Patricia's. He went carefully to the right window and knocked. There was
+no answer. He knocked again. Still no reply. He knocked loudly.
+
+"Is that you, Bones?" growled Sanders's voice.
+
+Bones gasped.
+
+"Awfully sorry, sir," he whispered agitatedly--"my mistake entirely."
+
+He tiptoed to the left window and rapped smartly. Then he whistled, then
+he rapped again.
+
+He heard a bed creak, and turned his head modestly away.
+
+"It's Bones, dear old sister," he said, in his loudest whisper. "Arise,
+for mornin' in the bowl of light has----"
+
+Hamilton's voice raged at him.
+
+"I knew it was you, you blithering----"
+
+"Dear old officer," began Bones, "awfully sorry! Go to sleep again.
+Night-night!"
+
+"Go to the devil!" said a muffled voice.
+
+Bones, however, went to the middle window; here he could make no
+mistake. He knocked authoritatively.
+
+"Hurry up, ma'am," he said; "time is on the wing----"
+
+The sash was flung up, and again Bones confronted the furious Hamilton.
+
+"Sir," said the exasperated Bones, "how the dooce did you get here?"
+
+"Don't you know this room has two windows? I told you last night, you
+goop! Pat sleeps at the other end of the building. I told you that, too,
+but you've got a brain like wool!"
+
+"I am obliged to you, sir," said Bones, on his dignity, "for the
+information. I will not detain you."
+
+Hamilton groped on his dressing-table for a hair-brush.
+
+"Go back to bed, sir," said Bones, "an' don't forget to say your
+prayers."
+
+He was searching for the window in the other wing of the Residency,
+when the girl, who had been up and dressed for a quarter of an hour,
+came softly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Wow!" screeched Bones. "Oh, Lord, dear old sister, you gave me the
+dickens of a fright! Well, let's get along. Thank heavens, we haven't
+disturbed anybody."
+
+He was followed to the boat with the imprecations of two pyjamaed
+figures that stood on the stoep and watched his lank body melt in the
+darkness.
+
+"Send us a wireless when you're coming back!" roared Hamilton.
+
+"Cad!" said Bones, between his teeth.
+
+Ali Abid had not been idle. He had aroused Yoka, the steersman, and
+Boosoobi, the engineer, and these two men had accepted the unexpected
+call with the curious readiness which natives show on such occasions,
+and which suggests that they have pre-knowledge of the summons, and are
+only waiting the word.
+
+In one of the small cabins Ali had arranged the much-discussed company
+accounts ready for his lord's attention, and there was every promise of
+a happy and a profitable day when Yoka rang the engines "ahead," and the
+_Wiggle_ jerked her way to midstream.
+
+The east had grown pale, there was a murmur from the dark forests on
+either bank, the timorous chirping or bad-tempered squawk of a bird, a
+faint fragrance of burning gumwood from the fishing villages
+established on the river bank, where, in dancing spots of light, the
+women were tending their fires.
+
+There is no intermediate stage on the big river between darkness and
+broad daylight. The stars go out all at once, and the inky sky which
+serves then becomes a delicate blue. The shadows melt deeper and deeper
+into the forest, clearly revealing the outlines of the straight-stemmed
+trees. There is just this interregnum of pearl greyness, a sort of
+hush-light, which lasts whilst a man counts twenty, before the silver
+lances of the sun are flashing through the leaves, and the grey veil
+which blurs the islands to shapeless blotches in a river of dull silver
+is burnt to nothingness, and the islands are living things of vivid
+green set in waters of gold.
+
+"The sunrise!" said Bones, and waved his hand to the east with the air
+of one who was responsible for the miracle.
+
+The girl sat in a deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the
+freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat,
+a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The
+sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, a rainbow
+in flight.
+
+"Isn't that wonderful?" she whispered.
+
+Bones peered up at the birds, shading his eyes.
+
+"Just like a jolly old patchwork quilt," he said. "What a pity they
+can't talk till you teach 'em! They're awful bad eatin', too, though
+some fellers say they make a good curry----"
+
+"Oh, look, look!"
+
+The _Wiggle_ was swerving to the southern bank of the river, and two
+majestic flamingos standing at the water's edge had arrested the girl's
+attention.
+
+"_They're_ bad eatin', too," said the informative Bones. "The flesh is
+fishy an' too fat; heron are just the same."
+
+"Haven't you a soul, Bones?" she asked severely.
+
+"A soul, dear ma'am?" Bones asked, in astonishment. "Why, that's my
+specialty!"
+
+It was a delightful morning for the girl, for Bones had retired to his
+cabin at her earnest request, and was struggling with the company
+accounts, and she was left to enjoy the splendour of the day, to watch
+the iron-red waters piling up against the _Wiggle's_ bows, to feel the
+cool breezes that swept down from the far-away mountains, and all this
+without being under the necessity of making conversation with Bones.
+
+That gentleman had a no less profitable morning, for Ali Abid was a
+methodical and clerkly man, and unearthed the missing thirty-nine
+dollars in the Compensation Record.
+
+"Thank goodness!" said Bones, relieved. "You're a jolly old accountant,
+Ali. I'd never have found it."
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision
+of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack of concentration."
+
+"Have it your way," said Bones, "but get the statement out for me to
+copy."
+
+He awoke the girl from a profound reverie--which centred about shy and
+solemn bachelors who adopted whole nations of murderous children as
+their own--and proceeded to "take charge."
+
+This implied the noisy issuing of orders which nobody carried out, the
+manipulation of a telescope, anxious glances at the heavens, deep and
+penetrating scrutinies of the water, and a promenade back and forward
+from one side of the launch to the other. Bones called this "pacing the
+bridge," and invariably carried his telescope tucked under his arm in
+the process, and, as he had to step over Pat's feet every time, and
+sometimes didn't, she arrested his nautical wanderings.
+
+"You make me dizzy," she said. "And isn't that the island?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the early hours of the afternoon they re-embarked, the _capita_ of
+the village coming to the beach to see them off.
+
+They brought back with them a collection of spear-heads, gruesome
+execution knives, elephant swords, and wonder-working steel figures.
+
+"And the lunch was simply lovely, Bones," agreed the girl, as the
+_Wiggle_ turned her nose homeward. "Really, you can be quite clever
+sometimes."
+
+"Dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones, "you saw me to-day as I really am.
+The mask was off, and the real Bones, kindly, thoughtful, considerate,
+an'--if I may use the word without your foundin' any great hope upon
+it--tender. You saw me free from carkin' care, alert----"
+
+"Go along and finish your accounts, like a good boy," she said. "I'm
+going to doze."
+
+Doze she did, for it was a warm, dozy afternoon, and the boat was
+running swiftly and smoothly with the tide. Bones yawned and wrote,
+copying Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept
+contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his
+post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful--Yoka, whose hands
+turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river
+ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.
+
+Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes
+its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow passages
+between. At this season only one such passage--the centre of all--is
+safe. This is known as "The Passage of the Tree," because all boats,
+even the _Zaire_, must pass so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a
+great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the
+current is never strong here, for the passage is a shallow one. Yoka
+felt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer
+to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose
+dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more
+than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging
+between bough and water.
+
+"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset
+is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his
+head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his
+thought was accompanied by strange guttural noises.
+
+Patricia Hamilton was also thinking, but much more gracefully. Boosoobi
+sat by his furnace door, nodding. Sometimes he looked at the steam
+gauge, sometimes he kicked open the furnace door and chucked in a few
+billets of wood, but, in the main, he was listening to the soothing
+"chook-a-chook, chook-a-chook" of his well-oiled engines.
+
+"Woo-yow!" yawned Bones, stretched himself, and came blinking into the
+sunlight. The sun was nearly setting.
+
+"What the dooce----" said Bones. He stared round.
+
+The _Wiggle_ had run out from the mouth of the river and was at sea.
+There was no sign of land of any description. The low-lying shores of
+the territory had long since gone under the horizon.
+
+Bones laid his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping girl, and she woke
+with a start.
+
+"Dear old shipmate," he said, and his voice trembled, "we're alone on
+this jolly old ocean! Lost the steersman!"
+
+She realized the seriousness of the situation in a moment.
+
+The dozing engineer, now wide awake, came aft at Bones's call, and
+accepted the disappearance of the steersman without astonishment.
+
+"We'll have to go back," said Bones, as he swung the wheel round. "I
+don't think I'm wrong in sayin' that the east is opposite to the west,
+an', if that's true, we ought to be home in time for dinner."
+
+"Sar," said Boosoobi, who, being a coast boy, elected to speak English,
+"dem wood she no lib."
+
+"Hey?" gasped Bones, turning pale.
+
+"Dem wood she be done. I look um. I see um. I no find um."
+
+Bones sat down heavily on the rail.
+
+"What does he say?" Pat asked anxiously.
+
+"He says there's no more wood," said Bones. "The horrid old bunkers are
+empty, an' we're at the mercy of the tempest."
+
+"Oh, Bones!" she cried, in consternation.
+
+But Bones had recovered.
+
+"What about swimmin' to shore with a line?" he said. "It can't be more
+than ten miles!"
+
+It was Ali Abid who prevented the drastic step.
+
+"Sir," he said, "the subject on such occasions should act with
+deliberate reserve. Proximity of land presupposes research. The subject
+should assist rather than retard research by passivity of action, easy
+respiration, and general normality of temperature."
+
+"Which means, dear old Miss Hamilton, that you've got to keep your wool
+on," explained Bones.
+
+What might have happened is not to be recorded, for at that precise
+moment the s.s. _Paretta_ came barging up over the horizon.
+
+There was still steam in the _Wiggle's_ little boiler, and one log of
+wood to keep it at pressure.
+
+Bones was incoherent, but again Ali came to the rescue.
+
+"Sir," he said, "for intimating SOS-ness there is upon steamer or launch
+certain scientific apparatus, unadjusted, but susceptible to treatment."
+
+"The wireless!" spluttered Bones. "Good lor', the wireless!"
+
+Twenty minutes later the _Wiggle_ ran alongside the gangway of the s.s.
+_Paretta_, anticipating the arrival of the _Zaire_ by half an hour.
+
+The s.s. _Paretta_ was at anchor when Sanders brought the _Zaire_ to the
+scene.
+
+He saw the _Wiggle_ riding serenely by the side of the great ship,
+looking for all the world like a humming bird under the wings of an
+ostrich, and uttered a little prayer of thankfulness.
+
+"They're safe," he said to Hamilton. "O Yoka, take the _Zaire_ to the
+other side of the big boat."
+
+"Master, do we go back to-night to seek Ko-boru?" asked Yoka, who was
+bearing marks which indicated his strenuous experience, for he had
+fought his way clear of his captors, and had swum with the stream to
+headquarters.
+
+"To-morrow is also a day," quoth Sanders.
+
+Hamilton was first on the deck of the s.s. _Paretta_, and found his
+sister and a debonair and complacent Bones waiting for him. With them
+was an officer whom Hamilton recognized.
+
+"Company accounts all correct, sir," said Bones, "audited by the jolly
+old paymaster"--he saluted the other officer--"an' found correct, sir,
+thus anticipatin' all your morose an' savage criticisms."
+
+Hamilton gripped his hand and grinned.
+
+"Bones was really wonderful," said the girl, "they wouldn't have seen us
+if it hadn't been for his idea."
+
+"Saved by wireless, sir," said Bones nonchalantly. "It was a mere
+nothin'--just a flash of inspiration."
+
+"You got the wireless to work?" asked Hamilton incredulously.
+
+"No, sir," said Bones. "But I wanted a little extra steam to get up to
+the ship, so I burnt the dashed thing. I knew it would come in handy
+sooner or later."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE REMEDY
+
+
+Beyond the far hills, which no man of the Ochori passed, was a range of
+blue mountains, and behind this again was the L'Mandi country. This
+adventurous hunting men of the Ochori had seen, standing in a safe place
+on the edge of the Great King's country. Also N'gombi people, who are
+notoriously disrespectful of all ghosts save their own, had, upon a
+time, penetrated the northern forest to a high knoll which Nature had
+shaped to the resemblance of a hayrick.
+
+A huntsman climbing this after his lawful quarry might gain a nearer
+view of the blue mountains, all streaked with silver at certain periods
+of the year, when a hundred streams came leaping with feathery feet from
+crag to crag to strengthen the forces of the upper river, or, as some
+said, to create through underground channels the big lakes M'soobo and
+T'sambi at the back of the N'gombi country.
+
+And on summer nights, when the big yellow moon came up and showed all
+things in her own chaste way, you might see from the knoll of the
+hayrick these silver ribbons all a-glitter, though the bulk of the
+mountain was lost to sight.
+
+The river folk saw little of the L'Mandi, because L'Mandi territory lies
+behind the country of the Great King, who looked with a jealous eye upon
+comings and goings in his land, and severely restricted the movement and
+the communications of his own people.
+
+The Great King followed his uncle in the government of the pleasant
+O'Mongo lands, and he had certain advantages and privileges, the
+significance of which he very imperfectly interpreted.
+
+His uncle had died suddenly at the hands of Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
+C.M.G., and the land itself might have passed to the protection of the
+Crown, for there was gold in the country in large and payable
+quantities.
+
+That such a movement was arrested was due largely to the L'Mandi and the
+influence they were able to exercise upon the European Powers by virtue
+of their military qualities. Downing Street was all for a permanent
+occupation of the chief city and the institution of a conventional
+_regime_; but the L'Mandi snarled, clicked their heels, and made
+jingling noises with their great swords, and there was at that moment a
+Government in office in England which was rather impressed by
+heel-clicking and sword-jingling, and so the territory of the Great King
+was left intact, and was marked on all maps as Omongoland, and coloured
+red, as being within the sphere of British influence. On the other hand,
+the L'Mandi people had it tinted yellow, and described it as an integral
+portion of the German Colonial Empire.
+
+There was little communication between L'Mandi and Sanders's territory,
+but that little was more than enough for the Commissioner, since it took
+the shape of evangelical incursions carried out by missionaries who were
+in the happy position of not being obliged to say as much as "By your
+leave," since they had secured from a Government which was, as I say,
+impressed by heel-clicking and sword-jingling, an impressive document,
+charging "all commissioners, sub-commissioners, magistrates, and
+officers commanding our native forces," to give facilities to these good
+Christian gentlemen.
+
+There were missionaries in the Territories who looked askance at their
+brethren, and Ferguson, of the River Mission, made a journey to
+headquarters to lay his views upon the subject before the Commissioner.
+
+"These fellows aren't missionaries at all, Mr. Sanders; they are just
+political agents utilizing sacred symbols to further a political
+propaganda."
+
+"That is a Government palaver," smiled Sanders, and that was all the
+satisfaction Ferguson received. Nevertheless, Sanders was watchful, for
+there were times when the L'Mandi missioners and their friends strayed
+outside their sphere.
+
+Once the L'Mandi folk had landed in a village in the middle Ochori, had
+flogged the headman, and made themselves free of the commodities which
+the people of the village had put aside for the payment of their
+taxation.
+
+In his wrath, Bosambo, the chief, had taken ten war canoes; but Sanders,
+who had been in the Akasava on a shooting trip, was there before him,
+and had meted out swift justice to the evil-doers.
+
+"And let me tell you, Bosambo," said Sanders severely, "that you shall
+not bring spears except at my word."
+
+"Lord," said Bosambo, frankness itself, "if I disobeyed you, it was
+because I was too hot to think."
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"That I know," he said. "Now I tell you this, Bosambo, and this is the
+way of very wise men--that when they go to do evil things with a hot
+heart, they first sleep, and in their sleep their spirits go free and
+talk with the wise and the dead, and when they wake, their hearts are
+cool, and they see all the folly of the night, and their eyes are bright
+for their own faults."
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, "you are my father and my mother, and all the
+people of the river you carry in your arms. Now I say to you that when I
+go to do an evil thing I will first sleep, and I will make all my people
+sleep also."
+
+There are strange stories in circulation as to the manner in which
+Bosambo carried out this novel reform. There is the story of an Ochori
+wife-beater who, adjured by his chief, retired to slumber on his
+grievance, and came to his master the following morning with the
+information that he had not closed his eyes. Whereupon Bosambo clubbed
+him insensible, in order that Sanders's plan might have a fair chance.
+
+At least, this is the story which Hamilton retailed at breakfast one
+morning. Sanders, appealed to for confirmation, admitted cautiously that
+he had heard the legend, but did not trouble to make an investigation.
+
+"The art of governing a native country," he said, "is the art of not
+asking questions."
+
+"But suppose you want to know something?" demanded Patricia.
+
+"Then," said Sanders, with a twinkle in his eyes, "you must pretend that
+you know."
+
+"What is there to do to-day?" asked Hamilton, rolling his serviette.
+
+He addressed himself to Lieutenant Tibbetts, who, to Sanders's intense
+annoyance, invariably made elaborate notes of all the Commissioner said.
+
+"Nothin' until this afternoon, sir," said Bones, closing his notebook
+briskly, "then we're doin' a little deep-sea fishin'."
+
+The girl made a grimace.
+
+"We didn't catch anything yesterday, Bones," she objected.
+
+"We used the wrong kind of worm," said Bones confidently. "I've found a
+new worm nest in the plantation. Jolly little fellers they are, too."
+
+"What are we doing to-day, Bones?" repeated Hamilton ominously.
+
+Bones puckered his brows.
+
+"Deep-sea fishin', dear old officer and comrade," he repeated, "an'
+after dinner a little game of tiddly-winks--Bones _v._ jolly old
+Hamilton's sister, for the championship of the River an' the Sanders
+Cup."
+
+Hamilton breathed deeply, but was patient.
+
+"Your King and your country," he said, "pay you seven and eightpence per
+diem----"
+
+"Oh," said Bones, a light dawning, "you mean _work_?"
+
+"Strange, is it not," mused Hamilton, "that we should
+consider----Hullo!"
+
+They followed the direction of his eyes.
+
+A white bird was circling groggily above the plantation, as though
+uncertain where to alight. There was weariness in the beat of its wings,
+in the irregularity of its flight. Bones leapt over the rail of the
+verandah and ran towards the square. He slowed down as he came to a
+place beneath the bird, and whistled softly.
+
+Bones's whistle was a thing of remarkable sweetness--it was his one
+accomplishment, according to Hamilton, and had neither tune nor rhyme.
+It was a succession of trills, rising and falling, and presently, after
+two hesitating swoops, the bird rested on his outstretched hand. He came
+back to the verandah and handed the pigeon to Sanders.
+
+The Commissioner lifted the bird and with gentle fingers removed the
+slip of thin paper fastened to its leg by a rubber band.
+
+Before he opened the paper he handed the weary little servant of the
+Government to an orderly.
+
+"Lord, this is Sombubo," said Abiboo, and he lifted the pigeon to his
+cheek, "and he comes from the Ochori."
+
+Sanders had recognized the bird, for Sombubo was the swiftest, the
+wisest, and the strongest of all his messengers, and was never
+dispatched except on the most critical occasions.
+
+He smoothed the paper and read the letter, which was in Arabic.
+
+     "From the servant of God Bosambo, in the Ochori City, to Sandi,
+     where-the-sea-runs.
+
+     "There have come three white men from the L'Mandi country, and they
+     have crossed the mountains. They sit with the Akasava in full
+     palaver. They say there shall be no more taxes for the People of
+     the River, but there shall come a new king greater than any. And
+     every man shall have goats and salt and free hunting. They say the
+     Akasava shall be given all the Ochori country, also guns like the
+     white man. Many guns and a thousand carriers are in the mountains
+     waiting to come. I hold the Ochori with all my spears. Also the
+     Isisi chief calls his young men for your King.
+
+     "Peace be on your house in the name of Allah Compassionate and
+     Merciful."
+
+"M-m!" said Sanders, as he folded the paper. "I'm afraid there will be
+no fishing this afternoon. Bones, take the _Wiggle_ and get up to the
+Akasava as fast as you can; I will follow on the _Zaire_. Abiboo!"
+
+"Lord?"
+
+"You will find me a swift Ochori pigeon. Hamilton, scribble a line to
+Bosambo, and say that he shall meet Bones by Sokala's village."
+
+Half an hour later Bones was sending incomprehensible semaphore signals
+of farewell as the _Wiggle_ slipped round the bend of the river.
+
+Sokala, a little chief of the Isisi, was a rich man. He had ten wives,
+each of whom lived in her own hut. Also each wife wore about her neck a
+great ring of brass weighing twenty pounds, to testify to the greatness
+and wealth of her lord.
+
+Sokala was wizened and lined of face, and across his forehead were many
+deep furrows, and it seemed that he lived in a state of perplexity as to
+what should become of all his riches when he died, for he was cursed
+with ten daughters--O'femi, Jubasami, K'sola, M'kema, Wasonga, Mombari,
+et cetera.
+
+When Wasonga was fourteen, there was revealed to Sokala, her father, a
+great wonder.
+
+The vision came at the tail end of a year of illness, when his head had
+ached for weeks together, and not even the brass wire twisted lightly
+about his skull brought him relief.
+
+Sokala was lying on his fine bed of skins, wondering why strange animals
+sat by the fire in the centre of his hut, and why they showed their
+teeth and talked in human language. Sometimes they were leopards,
+sometimes they were little white-whiskered monkeys that scratched and
+told one another stories, and these monkeys were the wisest of all, for
+they discussed matters which were of urgency to the sick man rolling
+restlessly from side to side.
+
+On this great night two such animals had appeared suddenly, a big grey
+fellow with a solemn face, and a very little one, and they sat staring
+into the fire, mechanically seeking their fleas until the little one
+spoke.
+
+"Sokala is very rich and has ten daughters."
+
+"That is true," said the other; "also he will die because he has no
+son."
+
+Sokala's heart beat furiously with fear, but he listened when the little
+black monkey spoke.
+
+"If Sokala took Wasonga, his daughter, into the forest near to The Tree
+and slew her, his daughters would become sons and he would grow well."
+
+And the other monkey nodded.
+
+As they talked, Sokala recognized the truth of all that they had said.
+He wondered that he had never thought of the matter before in this way.
+All night long he lay thinking--thinking--long after the fires had died
+down to a full red glow amidst white ashes, and the monkeys had
+vanished. In the cold dawn his people found him sitting on the side of
+the bed, and marvelled that he should have lived the night through.
+
+"Send me Wasonga, my daughter," he said, and they brought a sleepy girl
+of fourteen, tall, straight, and wholly reluctant. "We go a journey,"
+said Sokala, and took from beneath his bed his wicker shield and his
+sharp-edged throwing-spear.
+
+"Sokala hunts," said the people of the village significantly, and they
+knew that the end was very near, for he had been a great hunter, and men
+turn in death to the familiar pursuits of life.
+
+Three miles on the forest road to the Isisi city, Sokala bade his
+daughter sit on the ground.
+
+Bones had met and was in earnest conversation with the Chief of the
+Ochori, the _Wiggle_ being tied up at a wooding, when he heard a scream,
+and saw a girl racing through the wood towards him.
+
+Behind her, with the foolish stare on his face which comes to men in the
+last stages of sleeping sickness, his spear balanced, came Sokala.
+
+The girl tumbled in a wailing, choking heap at Bones's feet, and her
+pursuer checked at the sight of the white man.
+
+"I see you, Sokala,"[2] said Bones gently.
+
+[Footnote 2: The native equivalent for "Good morning."]
+
+"Lord," said the old man, blinking at the officer of the Houssas, "you
+shall see a wonderful magic when I slay this woman, for my daughters
+shall be sons, and I shall be a well man."
+
+Bones took the spear from his unresisting hand.
+
+"I will show you a greater magic, Sokala, for I will give you a little
+white stone which will melt like salt in your mouth, and you shall
+sleep."
+
+The old man peered from Lieutenant Tibbetts to the King of the Ochori.
+He watched Bones as he opened his medicine chest and shook out two
+little white pellets from a bottle marked "Veronal," and accepted them
+gratefully.
+
+"God bless my life," cried Bones, "don't chew 'em, you dear old
+silly--swallow 'em!"
+
+"Lord," said Sokala soberly, "they have a beautiful and a magic taste."
+
+Bones sent the frightened girl back to the village, and made the old man
+sit by a tree.
+
+"O Tibbetti," said Bosambo, in admiration, "that was a good palaver. For
+it is better than the letting of blood, and no one will know that Sokala
+did not die in his time."
+
+Bones looked at him in horror.
+
+"Goodness gracious heavens, Bosambo," he gasped, "you don't think I've
+poisoned him?"
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, nodding his head, "he die one time--he not fit
+for lib--you give um plenty no-good stuff. You be fine Christian feller
+same like me."
+
+Bones wiped the perspiration from his brow and explained the action of
+veronal. Bosambo was sceptical. Even when Sokala fell into a profound
+slumber, Bosambo waited expectantly for his death. And when he realized
+that Bones had spoken the truth, he was a most amazed man.
+
+"Master," he said, in that fluid Ochori dialect which seems to be made
+up of vowels, "this is a great magic. Now I see very surely that you
+hold wonderful ju-jus, and I have wronged you, for I thought you were
+without wisdom."
+
+"Cheer-oh!" said the gratified Bones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Near by the city of the Akasava is a small hill on which no vegetation
+grows, though it rises from a veritable jungle of undergrowth. The
+Akasava call this place the Hill of the Women, because it was here that
+M'lama, the King of the Akasava, slew a hundred Akasava maidens to
+propitiate M'shimba M'shamba, the god of storms. It was on the topmost
+point of the hill that Sanders erected a fine gallows and hung M'lama
+for his country's good. It had always been associated with the spiritual
+history of the Akasava, for ghosts and devils and strange ju-jus had
+their home hereabouts, and every great decision at which the people
+arrived was made upon its slopes. At the crest there was a palaver
+house--no more than a straw-thatched canopy affording shelter for four
+men at the most.
+
+On a certain afternoon all the chiefs, great and minor, the headmen, the
+warriors, and the leaders of fishing villages of the Akasava, squatted
+in a semicircle and listened to the oration of a bearded man, who spoke
+easily in the river dialect of the happy days which were coming to the
+people.
+
+By his side were two other white men--a tall, clean-shaven man with
+spectacles, and a stouter man with a bristling white moustache.
+
+Had the bearded man's address been in plain English, or even plain
+German, and had it been delivered to European hearers accustomed to
+taking its religion in allegories and symbols, it would have been
+harmless. As it was, the illustrations and the imagery which the speaker
+employed had no other interpretation to the simple-minded Akasava than a
+purely material one.
+
+"I speak for the Great King," said the orator, throwing out his arms, "a
+king who is more splendid than any. He has fierce and mighty armies that
+cover the land like ants. He holds thunder and lightning in his hand,
+and is greater than M'shimba M'shamba. He is the friend of the black man
+and the white, and will deliver you from all oppression. He will give
+you peace and full crops, and make you _capita_ over your enemies. When
+he speaks, all other kings tremble. He is a great buffalo, and the
+pawing of his hoofs shakes the earth.
+
+"This he says to you, the warrior people of the Akasava----"
+
+The message was destined to be undelivered.
+
+Heads began to turn, and there was a whisper of words. Some of the
+audience half rose, some on the outskirts of the gathering stole quietly
+away--the lesser chiefs were amongst these--and others, sitting stolidly
+on, assumed a blandness and a scepticism of demeanour calculated to meet
+the needs of the occasion.
+
+For Sanders was at the foot of the hill, a trim figure in white, his
+solar helmet pushed back to cover the nape of his neck from the slanting
+rays of the sun, and behind Sanders were two white officers and a
+company of Houssas with fixed bayonets. Not a word said Sanders, but
+slowly mounted the Hill of the Dead. He reached the palaver house and
+turned.
+
+"Let no man go," he said, observing the disposition of the gathering to
+melt away, "for this is a great palaver, and I come to speak for these
+God-men."
+
+The bearded orator glared at the Commissioner and half turned to his
+companions. The stout man with the moustache said something quickly, but
+Sanders silenced him with a gesture.
+
+"O people," said Sanders, "you all know that under my King men may live
+in peace, and death comes quickly to those who make war. Also you may
+worship in what manner you desire, though it be my God or the famous
+gods of your fathers. And such as preach of God or gods have full
+liberty. Who denies this?"
+
+"Lord, you speak the truth," said an eager headman.
+
+"Therefore," said Sanders, "my King has given these God-men a book[3]
+that they may speak to you, and they have spoken. Of a great king they
+tell. Also of wonders which will come to you if you obey him. But this
+king is the same king of whom the God-cross men and the water-God men
+tell. For he lives beyond the stars, and his name is God. Tell me,
+preacher, if this is the truth?"
+
+[Footnote 3: A book = written permission, any kind of document or
+writing.]
+
+The bearded man swallowed something and muttered, "This is true."
+
+"Also, there is no king in this world greater than my King, whom you
+serve," Sanders continued, "and it is your duty to be obedient to him,
+and his name is D'jorja." Sanders raised his hand to his helmet in
+salute. "This also the God-men will tell you."
+
+He turned to the three evangelists.
+
+Herr Professor Wiessmann hesitated for the fraction of a second. The
+pause was pardonable, for he saw the undoing of three months' good work,
+and his thoughts at that moment were with a certain party of carriers
+who waited in the mountains.
+
+"The question of earthly and heavenly dominion is always debatable," he
+began in English, but Sanders stopped him.
+
+"We will speak in the Akasava tongue," he said, "and let all men hear.
+Tell me, shall my people serve my King, or shall they serve another?"
+
+"They shall serve your King," growled the man, "for it is the law."
+
+"Thank you," said Sanders in English.
+
+The gathering slowly dispersed, leaving only the white men on the hill
+and a few lingering folk at the foot, watching the stolid native
+soldiery with an apprehension born of experience.
+
+"We should like you to dine with us," said Sanders pleasantly.
+
+The leader of the L'Mandi mission hesitated, but the thin man with the
+spectacles, who had been silent, answered for him.
+
+"We shall be pleased, Mr. Commissioner," he said. "After eating with
+these swine for a month, a good dinner would be very acceptable."
+
+Sanders said nothing, though he winced at the inelegant description of
+his people, and the three evangelists went back to their huts, which had
+been built for their use by the Akasava chief.
+
+An hour later that worthy sent for a certain witch-doctor.
+
+"Go secretly," he said, "and call all headmen and chiefs to the Breaking
+Tree in the forest. There they shall be until the moon comes up, and the
+L'Mandi lords will come and speak freely. And you shall tell them that
+the word he spoke before Sandi was no true word, but to-night he shall
+speak the truth, and when Sandi is gone we shall have wonderful guns
+and destroy all who oppose us."
+
+This the witch-doctor did, and came back by the river path.
+
+Here, by all accounts, he met Bosambo, and would have passed on; but the
+Chief of the Ochori, being in a curious mind and being, moreover,
+suspicious, was impressed by the importance of the messenger, and made
+inquiries....
+
+An old man is a great lover of life, and after the witch-doctor's head
+had been twice held under water--for the river was providentially
+near--he gasped the truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The three missioners were very grateful guests indeed. They were the
+more grateful because Patricia Hamilton was an unexpected hostess. They
+clicked their heels and kissed her hand and drank her health many times
+in good hock. The dinner was a feast worthy of Lucullus, they swore, the
+wine was perfect, and the coffee--which Abiboo handed round with a
+solemn face--was wonderful.
+
+They sat chatting for a time, and then the bearded man looked at his
+watch.
+
+"To bed, gentlemen," he said gaily. "We leave you, Herr Commissioner, in
+good friendship, we trust?"
+
+"Oh, most excellent," said Sanders awkwardly, for he was a poor liar,
+and knew that his spies were waiting on the bank to "pick up" these
+potential enemies of his.
+
+He watched them go ashore and disappear into the darkness of the forest
+path that leads to the village.
+
+The moon was rising over the tall trees, and an expectant gathering of
+Akasava notables were waiting for a white spokesman who came not, when
+Bosambo and his bodyguard were engaged in lifting three unconscious men
+and laying them in a large canoe. He himself paddled the long boat to
+midstream, where two currents run swiftly, one to the sea and one to the
+Isisi River, which winds for a hundred miles until it joins the Congo.
+
+"Go with God," said Bosambo piously, as he stepped into his own canoe,
+and released his hold of the other with its slumbering freight, "for if
+your king is so great, he will bring you to your own lands; and if he is
+not great, then you are liars. O Abiboo"--he spoke over his shoulder to
+the sergeant of Houssas--"tell me, how many of the magic white stones of
+Bonesi did you put in their drink?"
+
+"Bosambo, I put four in each, as you told me, and if my lord Tibbetti
+misses them, what shall I say?"
+
+"You shall say," said Bosambo, "that this is Sandi's own word--that when
+men plan evils they must first sleep. And I think these men will sleep
+for a long time. Perhaps they will sleep for ever--all things are with
+God."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MEDICINE MAN
+
+
+At the flood season, before the turbulent tributaries of the Isisi River
+had been induced to return to their accustomed channels, Sanders came
+back to headquarters a very weary man, for he had spent a horrid week in
+an endeavour--successful, but none the less nerve-racking--to impress an
+indolent people that the swamping of their villages was less a matter of
+Providence and ghosts than the neglect of elementary precaution.
+
+"For I told you, Ranabini," said an exasperated Sanders, "that you
+should keep the upper channel free from trees and branches, and I have
+paid you many bags of salt for your services."
+
+"Lord, it is so," said Ranabini, scratching his brown leg thoughtfully.
+
+"At the full of the moon, before the rains, did I not ask you if the
+channel was clear, and did you not say it was like the street of your
+village?" demanded Sanders, in wrath.
+
+"Lord," said Ranabini frankly, "I lied to you, thinking your lordship
+was mad. For what other man would foresee with his wonderful eye that
+rains would come? Therefore, lord, I did not think of the upper channel,
+and many trees floated down and made a little dam. Lord, I am an
+ignorant man, and my mind is full of my own brother, who has come from a
+long distance to see me, for he is a very sick man."
+
+Sanders's mind was occupied by no thought of Ranabini's sick brother, as
+the dazzling white _Zaire_ went thrashing her way down stream. For he
+himself was a tired man, and needed rest, and there was a dose of
+malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as
+though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and
+these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each
+lightning flicker a momentary unconsciousness.
+
+Captain Hamilton met him on the quay, and when Sanders landed--walking a
+thought unsteadily, and instantly began a long and disjointed account of
+his adventures on a Norwegian salmon river--Hamilton took him by the arm
+and led the way to the bungalow.
+
+In ten minutes he was assisting Sanders into his pyjamas, Sanders
+protesting, albeit feebly, and when, after forcing an astonishing amount
+of quinine and arsenic down his chief's throat, Hamilton came from the
+semi-darkness of the bungalow to the white glare of the barrack square,
+Hamilton was thoughtful.
+
+"Let one of your women watch by the bed of the lord Sandi," said he to
+Sergeant Abiboo, of the Houssas, "and she shall call me if he grows
+worse."
+
+"On my life," said Abiboo, and was going off.
+
+"Where is Tibbetti?" asked Hamilton.
+
+The sergeant turned back and seemed embarrassed.
+
+"Lord," he said, "Tibbetti has gone with the lady, your sister, to make
+a palaver with Jimbujini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava. They sit in
+the forest in a magic circle, and lo! Tibbetti grows very wise."
+
+Hamilton swore under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his
+second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the
+drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from the coast.
+
+"Go tell the lord Tibbetti to come to me," he said, "but first send your
+woman to Sandi."
+
+Lieutenant Tibbetts, with his plain, boyish face all red with his
+exertions, yet dignified withal, came hurriedly from his studies.
+
+"Come aboard, sir," he said, and saluted extravagantly, blinking at his
+superior with a curious solemnity of mien which was his own peculiar
+expression.
+
+"Bones," said Hamilton, "where the dickens have you been?"
+
+Bones drew a long breath. He hesitated, then--
+
+"Knowledge," he said shortly.
+
+Hamilton looked at his subordinate in alarm.
+
+"Dash it, you aren't off your head, too, are you?"
+
+Bones shook his head with vigour.
+
+"Knowledge of the occult, sir and brother-officer," he said. "One is
+never too old to learn, sir, in this jolly old world."
+
+"Quite right," said Hamilton; "in fact, I'm pretty certain that you'll
+never live long enough to learn everything."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Bones.
+
+The girl, who had had less qualms than Bones when the summons arrived,
+and had, in consequence, returned more leisurely, came into the room.
+
+"Pat," said her brother, "Sanders is down with fever."
+
+"Fever!" she said a little breathlessly. "It isn't--dangerous?"
+
+Bones, smiling indulgently, soothed her.
+
+"Nothin' catchin', dear Miss Patricia Hamilton," he began.
+
+"Please don't be stupid," she said so fiercely that Bones recoiled. "Do
+you think I'm afraid of catching anything? Is it dangerous for Mr.
+Sanders?" she asked her brother.
+
+"No more dangerous than a cold in the head," he answered flippantly. "My
+dear child, we all have fever. You'll have it, too, if you go out at
+sunset without your mosquito boots."
+
+He explained, with the easy indifference of a man inured to malaria,
+the habits of the mosquito--his predilection for ankles and wrists,
+where the big veins and arteries are nearer to the surface--but the girl
+was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so
+alarmed Hamilton that she abandoned it.
+
+"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a
+trivet in the morning."
+
+She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast
+his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand
+shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought
+Patricia Hamilton, and said so.
+
+"Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit
+for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is
+simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you
+remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply
+delirious--ravin'--off my head."
+
+"So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we
+didn't think you were ill."
+
+"If you'd seen me," Bones went on, solemnly shaking one skinny
+forefinger at the girl, "you'd have said: 'Bones is for the High Jump.'"
+
+"I should have said nothing so vulgar, Bones," she retorted. "And was it
+malaria?"
+
+"Ah," said Hamilton triumphantly, "I was too much of a gentleman to hint
+that it wasn't. Press the question, Pat."
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders and cast a look of withering contempt upon
+his superior.
+
+"In the execution of one's duty, dear Miss Patricia H," he said, "the
+calibre of the gun that lays a fellow low, an' plunges his relations an'
+creditors into mournin', is beside the point. The only consideration, as
+dear old Omar says, is--
+
+     "'The movin' finger hits, an', havin' hit,
+     Moves on, tum tumty tumty tay,
+     And all a feller does won't make the slightest difference.'"
+
+"Is that Omar or Shakespeare?" asked the dazed Hamilton.
+
+"Be quiet, dear. What was the illness, Bones?"
+
+"Measles," said Hamilton brutally, "and German measles at that."
+
+"Viciously put, dear old officer, but, nevertheless, true," said Bones
+buoyantly. "But when the hut's finished, I'll return good for evil.
+There's goin' to be a revolution, Miss Patricia Hamilton. No more fever,
+no more measles--health, wealth, an' wisdom, by gad!"
+
+"Sunstroke," diagnosed Hamilton. "Pull yourself together, Bones--you're
+amongst friends."
+
+But Bones was superior to sarcasm.
+
+There was a creature of Lieutenant Tibbetts a solemn, brown man, who
+possessed, in addition to a vocabulary borrowed from a departed
+professor of bacteriology, a rough working knowledge of the classics.
+This man's name was, as I have already explained, Abid Ali or Ali Abid,
+and in him Bones discovered a treasure beyond price.
+
+Bones had recently built himself a large square hut near the
+seashore--that is to say, he had, with the expenditure of a great amount
+of midnight oil, a pair of compasses, a box of paints, and a T-square,
+evolved a somewhat complicated plan whereon certain blue oblongs stood
+for windows, and certain red cones indicated doors. To this he had added
+an elevation in the severe Georgian style.
+
+With his plan beautifully drawn to scale, with sectional diagrams and
+side elevations embellishing its margin, he had summoned Mojeri of the
+Lower Isisi, famous throughout the land as a builder of great houses,
+and to him he had entrusted the execution of his design.
+
+"This you shall build for me, Mojeri," said Bones, sucking the end of
+his pencil and gazing lovingly at the plan outspread before him, "and
+you shall be famous all through the world. This room shall be twice as
+large as that, and you shall cunningly contrive a passage so that I may
+move from one to the other, and none see me come or go. Also, this shall
+be my sleeping-place, and this a great room where I will practise
+powerful magics."
+
+Mojeri took the plan in his hand and looked at it. He turned it upside
+down and looked at it that way. Then he looked at it sideways.
+
+"Lord," said he, putting down the plan with a reverent hand, "all these
+wonders I shall remember."
+
+"And did he?" asked Hamilton, when Bones described the interview.
+
+Bones blinked and swallowed.
+
+"He went away and built me a square hut--just a plain square hut. Mojeri
+is an ass, sir--a jolly old fraud an' humbug, sir. He----"
+
+"Let me see the plan," said Hamilton, and his subordinate produced the
+cartridge paper.
+
+"H'm!" said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny. "Very pretty. But how
+did you get into your room?"
+
+"Through the door, dear old officer," said the sarcastic Bones.
+
+"I thought it might be through the roof," said Hamilton, "or possibly
+you made one of your famous dramatic entries through a star-trap in the
+floor--
+
+     "'Who is it speaks in those sepulchral tones?
+     It is the demon king--the grisly Bones!
+                                      Bing!'
+
+"and up you pop amidst red fire and smoke."
+
+A light dawned on Bones.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, jolly old Ham, that I forgot to put a door into
+my room?" he asked incredulously, and peered over his chief's shoulder.
+
+"That is what I mean, Bones. And where does the passage lead to?"
+
+"That goes straight from my sleepin' room to the room marked L," said
+Bones, in triumph.
+
+"Then you _were_ going to be a demon king," said the admiring Hamilton.
+"But fortunately for you, Bones, the descent to L is not so easy--you've
+drawn a party wall across----"
+
+"L stands for laboratory," explained the architect hurriedly. "An'
+where's the wall? God bless my jolly old soul, so I have! Anyway, that
+could have been rectified in a jiffy."
+
+"Speaking largely," said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny of the plan,
+"I think Mojeri has acted wisely. You will have to be content with the
+one room. What was the general idea of the house, anyway?"
+
+"Science an' general illumination of the human mind," said Bones
+comprehensively.
+
+"I see," said Hamilton. "You were going to make fireworks. A splendid
+idea, Bones."
+
+"Painful as it is to undeceive you, dear old sir," said Bones,
+with admirable patience, "I must tell you that I'm takin' up my
+medical studies where I left off. Recently I've been wastin' my time,
+sir: precious hours an' minutes have been passed in frivolous
+amusement--_tempus fugit_, sir an' captain, _festina lente_, an'
+I might add----"
+
+"Don't," begged Hamilton; "you give me a headache."
+
+There was a look of interest in Bones's eyes.
+
+"If I may be allowed to prescribe, sir----" he began.
+
+"Thanks, I'd rather have the headache," replied Hamilton hastily.
+
+It was nearly a week before the laboratory was fitted that Bones gave a
+house-warming, which took the shape of an afternoon tea. Bones, arrayed
+in a long white coat, wearing a ferocious lint mask attached to huge
+mica goggles, through which he glared on the world, met the party at the
+door and bade them a muffled welcome. They found the interior of the hut
+a somewhat uncomfortable place. The glass retorts, test tubes, bottles,
+and the paraphernalia of science which Bones had imported crowded the
+big table, the shelves, and even overflowed on to the three available
+chairs.
+
+"Welcome to my little workroom," said the hollow voice of Bones from
+behind the mask. "Wel----Don't put your foot in the crucible, dear old
+officer! You're sittin' on the methylated spirits, ma'am! Phew!"
+
+Bones removed his mask and showed a hot, red face.
+
+"Don't take it off, Bones," begged Hamilton; "it improves you."
+
+Sanders was examining the microscope, which stood under a big glass
+shade.
+
+"You're very complete, Bones," he said approvingly. "In what branch of
+science are you dabbling?"
+
+"Tropical diseases, sir," said Bones promptly, and lifted the shade.
+"I'm hopin' you'll allow me to have a look at your blood after tea."
+
+"Thank you," said Sanders. "You had better practise on Hamilton."
+
+"Don't come near me!" threatened Hamilton.
+
+It was Patricia who, when the tea-things had been removed, played the
+heroine.
+
+"Take mine," she said, and extended her hand.
+
+Bones found a needle, and sterilized it in the flame of a spirit lamp.
+
+"This won't hurt you," he quavered, and brought the point near the
+white, firm flesh. Then he drew it back again.
+
+"This won't hurt you, dear old miss," he croaked, and repeated the
+performance.
+
+He stood up and wiped his streaming brow.
+
+"I haven't the heart to do it," he said dismally.
+
+"A pretty fine doctor you are, Bones!" she scoffed, and took the needle
+from his hand. "There!"
+
+Bones put the tiny crimson speck between his slides, blobbed a drop of
+oil on top, and focussed the microscope.
+
+He looked for a long time, then turned a scared face to the girl.
+
+"Sleepin' sickness, poor dear old Miss Hamilton!" he gasped. "You're
+simply full of tryps! Good Lord! What a blessin' for you I discovered
+it!"
+
+Sanders pushed the young scientist aside and looked. When he turned his
+head, the girl saw his face was white and drawn, and for a moment a
+sense of panic overcame her.
+
+"You silly ass," growled the Commissioner, "they aren't trypnosomes! You
+haven't cleaned the infernal eyepiece!"
+
+"Not trypnosomes?" said Bones.
+
+"You seem disappointed, Bones," said Hamilton.
+
+"As a man, I'm overjoyed," replied Bones gloomily; "as a scientist, it's
+a set-back, dear old officer--a distinct set-back."
+
+The house-warming lasted a much shorter time than the host had intended.
+This was largely due to the failure of a very beautiful experiment which
+he had projected. In order that the rare and wonderful result at which
+he aimed should be achieved, Bones had the hut artificially darkened,
+and they sat in a hot and sticky blackness, whilst he knocked over
+bottles and swore softly at the instruments his groping hand could not
+discover. And the end of the experiment was a large, bad smell.
+
+"The women and children first," said Hamilton, and dived for the door.
+
+They took farewell of Bones at a respectful distance.
+
+Hamilton went across to the Houssa lines, and Sanders walked back to the
+Residency with the girl. For a little while they spoke of Bones and his
+newest craze, and then suddenly the girl asked--
+
+"You didn't really think there were any of those funny things in my
+blood, did you?"
+
+Sanders looked straight ahead.
+
+"I thought--you see, we know--the tryp is a distinct little body, and
+anybody who had lived in this part of the world for a time can pick him
+out. Bones, of course, knows nothing thoroughly--I should have
+remembered that."
+
+She said nothing until they reached the verandah, and she turned to go
+to her room.
+
+"It wasn't nice, was it?" she said.
+
+Sanders shook his head.
+
+"It was a taste of hell," he said simply. And she fetched a quick, long
+sigh and patted his arm before she realized what she was doing.
+
+Bones, returning from his hut, met Sanders hurrying across the square.
+
+"Bones, I want you to go up to the Isisi," said the Commissioner.
+"There's an outbreak of some weird disease, probably due to the damming
+of the little river by Ranabini, and the flooding of the low forests."
+
+Bones brightened up.
+
+"Sir an' Excellency," he said gratefully, "comin' from you, this tribute
+to my scientific----"
+
+"Don't be an ass, Bones!" said Sanders irritably. "Your job is to make
+these beggars work. They'll simply sit and die unless you start them on
+drainage work. Cut a few ditches with a fall to the river; kick Ranabini
+for me; take up a few kilos of quinine and dose them."
+
+Nevertheless, Bones managed to smuggle on board quite a respectable
+amount of scientific apparatus, and came in good heart to the despondent
+folk of the Lower Isisi.
+
+Three weeks after Bones had taken his departure, Sanders was sitting at
+dinner in a very thoughtful mood.
+
+Patricia had made several ineffectual attempts to draw him into a
+conversation, and had been answered in monosyllables. At first she had
+been piqued and a little angry, but, as the meal progressed, she
+realized that matters of more than ordinary seriousness were occupying
+his thoughts, and wisely changed her attitude of mind. A chance
+reference to Bones, however, succeeded where more pointed attempts had
+failed.
+
+"Yes," said Sanders, in answer to the question she had put, "Bones has
+some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for
+two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his
+forte."
+
+"Don't you sometimes feel the need of a doctor here?" she asked, and
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"There is very little necessity. The military doctor comes down
+occasionally from headquarters, and we have a native apothecary. We have
+few epidemics amongst the natives, and those the medical missions deal
+with--sleep-sickness, beri-beri and the like. Sometimes, of course, we
+have a pretty bad outbreak which spreads----Don't go, Hamilton--I want
+to see you for a minute."
+
+Hamilton had risen, and was making for his room, with a little nod to
+his sister.
+
+At Sanders's word he turned.
+
+"Walk with me for a few minutes," said Sanders, and, with an apology to
+the girl, he followed the other from the room.
+
+"What is it?" asked Hamilton.
+
+Sanders was perturbed--this he knew, and his own move towards his room
+was in the nature of a challenge for information.
+
+"Bones," said the Commissioner shortly. "Do you realize that we have had
+no news from him since he left?"
+
+Hamilton smiled.
+
+"He's an erratic beggar, but nothing could have happened to him, or we
+should have heard about it."
+
+Sanders did not reply at once. He paced up and down the gravelled path
+before the Residency, his hands behind him.
+
+"No news has come from Ranabini's village for the simple reason that
+nobody has entered or left it since Bones arrived," he said. "It is
+situated, as you know, on a tongue of land at the confluence of two
+rivers. No boat has left the beaches, and an attempt to reach it by land
+has been prevented by force."
+
+"By force?" repeated the startled Hamilton.
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"I had the report in this morning. Two men of the Isisi from another
+village went to call on some relations. They were greeted with arrows,
+and returned hurriedly. The headman of M'gomo village met with the same
+reception. This came to the ears of my chief spy Ahmet, who attempted to
+paddle to the island in his canoe. At a distance of two hundred yards he
+was fired upon."
+
+"Then they've got Bones?" gasped Hamilton.
+
+"On the contrary, Bones nearly got Ahmet, for Bones was the marksman."
+
+The two men paced the path in silence.
+
+"Either Bones has gone mad," said Hamilton, "or----"
+
+"Or----?"
+
+Hamilton laughed helplessly.
+
+"I can't fathom the mystery," he said. "McMasters will be down
+to-morrow, to look at some sick men. We'll take him up, and examine the
+boy."
+
+It was a subdued little party that boarded the _Zaire_ the following
+morning, and Patricia Hamilton, who came to see them off, watched their
+departure with a sense of impending trouble.
+
+Dr. McMasters alone was cheerful, for this excursion represented a break
+in a somewhat monotonous routine.
+
+"It may be the sun," he suggested. "I have known several fellows who
+have gone a little nutty from that cause. I remember a man at Grand
+Bassam who shot----"
+
+"Oh, shut up, Mac, you grisly devil!" snapped Hamilton. "Talk about
+butterflies."
+
+The _Zaire_ swung round the bend of the river that hid Ranabini's
+village from view, but had scarcely come into sight when--
+
+"Ping!"
+
+Sanders saw the bullet strike the river ahead of the boat, and send a
+spiral column of water shooting into the air. He put up his glasses and
+focussed them on the village beach.
+
+"Bones!" he said grimly. "Take her in, Abiboo."
+
+As the steersman spun the wheel--
+
+"Ping!"
+
+This time the shot fell to the right.
+
+The three white men looked at one another.
+
+"Let every man take cover," said Sanders quietly. "We're going to that
+beach even if Bones has a battery of 75's!"
+
+An exclamation from Hamilton arrested him.
+
+"He's signalling," said the Houssa Captain, and Sanders put up his
+glasses again.
+
+Bones's long arms were waving at ungainly angles as he semaphored his
+warning.
+
+Hamilton opened his notebook and jotted down the message--
+
+"Awfully sorry, dear old officer," he spelt, and grinned at the
+unnecessary exertion of this fine preliminary flourish, "but must keep
+you away. Bad outbreak of virulent smallpox----"
+
+Sanders whistled, and pulled back the handle of the engine-room
+telegraph to "stop."
+
+"My God!" said Hamilton through his teeth, for he had seen such an
+outbreak once, and knew something of its horrors. Whole districts had
+been devastated in a night. One tribe had been wiped out, and the
+rotting frames of their houses still showed amidst the tangle of
+elephant grass which had grown up through the ruins.
+
+He wiped his forehead and read the message a little unsteadily, for his
+mind was on his sister--
+
+     "Had devil of fight, and lost twenty men, but got it under. Come
+     and get me in three weeks. Had to stay here for fear careless
+     devils spreading disease."
+
+Sanders looked at Hamilton, and McMasters chuckled.
+
+"This is where I get a swift vacation," he said, and called his servant.
+
+Hamilton leapt on to the rail, and steadying himself against a
+stanchion, waved a reply--
+
+"We are sending you a doctor."
+
+Back came the reply in agitated sweeps of arm--
+
+"Doctor be blowed! What am I?"
+
+"What shall I say, sir?" asked Hamilton after he had delivered the
+message.
+
+"Just say 'a hero,'" said Sanders huskily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BONES, KING-MAKER
+
+
+Patricia Hamilton, an observant young lady, had not failed to notice
+that every day, at a certain hour, Bones disappeared from view. It was
+not for a long time that she sought an explanation.
+
+"Where is Bones?" she asked one morning, when the absence of her
+cavalier was unusually protracted.
+
+"With his baby," said her brother.
+
+"Please don't be comic, dear. Where is Bones? I thought I saw him with
+the ship's doctor."
+
+The mail had come in that morning, and the captain and surgeon of the
+s.s. _Boma Queen_ had been their guests at breakfast.
+
+Hamilton looked up from his book and removed his pipe.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that Bones has kept his guilty secret all this
+time?" he asked anxiously.
+
+She sat down by his side.
+
+"Please tell me the joke. This isn't the first time you have ragged
+Bones about 'the baby'; even Mr. Sanders has done it."
+
+She looked across at the Commissioner with a reproving shake of her
+pretty head.
+
+"Have _I_ ragged Bones?" asked Sanders, in surprise. "I never thought I
+was capable of ragging anybody."
+
+"The truth is, Pat," said her brother, "there isn't any rag about the
+matter. Bones adopted a piccanin."
+
+"A child?"
+
+"A baby about a month old. Its mother died, and some old bird of a
+witch-doctor was 'chopping' it when Bones appeared on the scene."
+
+Patricia gave a little gurgle of delight and clapped her hands. "Oh,
+please tell me everything about it."
+
+"It was Sanders who told her of Henry Hamilton Bones, his dire peril and
+his rescue; it was Hamilton who embellished the story of how Bones had
+given his adopted son his first bath.
+
+"Just dropped him into a tub and stirred him round with a mop."
+
+Soon after this Bones came blithely up from the beach and across the
+parade-ground, his large pipe in his mouth, his cane awhirl.
+
+Hamilton watched him from the verandah of the Residency, and called over
+his shoulder to Patricia.
+
+It had been an anxious morning for Bones, and even Hamilton was
+compelled to confess to himself that he had felt the strain, though he
+had not mentioned the fact to his sister.
+
+Outside in the roadstead the intermediate Elder Dempster boat was
+waiting the return of the doctor. Bones had been to see him off. An
+important day, indeed, for Henry Hamilton Bones had been vaccinated.
+
+"I think it 'took,'" said Bones gravely, answering the other's question.
+"I must say Henry behaved like a gentleman."
+
+"What did Fitz say?"
+
+(Fitzgerald, the doctor, had come in accordance with his promise to
+perform the operation.)
+
+"Fitz?" said Bones, and his voice trembled. "Fitz is a cad!"
+
+Hamilton grinned.
+
+"He said that babies didn't feel pain, and there was Henry howling his
+young head off. It was horrible!"
+
+Bones wiped his streaming brow with a large and violent bandana, and
+looked round cautiously.
+
+"Not a word, Ham, to her!" he said, in a loud whisper.
+
+"Sorry!" said Hamilton, picking up his pipe. "Her knows."
+
+"Good gad!" said Bones, in despair, and turned to meet the girl.
+
+"Oh, Bones!" she said reproachfully, "you never told me!"
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, dropped his pipe,
+blinked, spread out his hands in deprecation, and picked up his pipe.
+
+From which it may be gathered that he was agitated.
+
+"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said tremulously, "I should be a horrid
+bounder if I denied Henry Hamilton Bones--poor little chap. If I never
+mentioned him, dear old sister, it is because----Ah, well, you will
+never understand."
+
+He hunched his shoulders dejectedly.
+
+"Don't be an ass, Bones. Why the dickens are you making a mystery of the
+thing?" asked Hamilton. "I'll certify you're a jolly good father to the
+brat."
+
+"Not 'brat,' dear old sir," begged Bones. "Henry is a human being with a
+human heart. That boy"--he wagged his finger solemnly--"knows me the
+moment I go into the hut. To see him sit up an' say 'Da!' dear old
+sister Hamilton," he went on incoherently, "to see him open his mouth
+with a smile, one tooth through, an' one you can feel with your little
+finger--why, it's--it's wonderful, jolly old Miss Hamilton! Damn it,
+it's wonderful!"
+
+"Bones!" cried the shocked girl.
+
+"I can't help it, madame," said Bones miserably. "Fitz cut his poor
+little, fat little arm. Oh, Fitz is a low cad! Cut it, my dear old
+Patricia, mercilessly--yes, mercilessly, brutally, an' the precious
+little blighter didn't so much as call for the police. Good gad, it was
+terrible!"
+
+His eyes were moist, and he blew his nose with great vigour.
+
+"I'm sure it was awful," she soothed him. "May I come and see him?"
+
+Bones raised a warning hand, and, though the habitat of the wonderful
+child could not have been less than half a mile away, lowered his voice.
+
+"He's asleep--fitfully, but asleep. I've told them to call me if he has
+a turn for the worse, an' I'm goin' down with a gramophone after dinner,
+in case the old fellow wants buckin' up. But now he's asleep, thankin'
+you for your great kindness an' sympathy, dear old miss, in the moment
+of singular trial."
+
+He took her hand and shook it heartily, tried to say something, and
+swallowed hard, then, turning, walked from the verandah in the direction
+of his hut.
+
+The girl was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"What a boy!" she said, half to herself.
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"Bones is very nice," he said, and she looked at him curiously.
+
+"That is almost eloquent," she said quietly.
+
+"I thought it was rather bald," he replied. "You see, few people really
+understand Bones. I thought, the first time I saw him, that he was a
+fool. I was wrong. Then I thought he was effeminate. I was wrong again,
+for he has played the man whenever he was called upon to do so. Bones
+is one of those rare creatures--a man with all the moral equipment of a
+good woman."
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his, and for a moment they held. Then hers
+dropped quickly, and she flushed ever so slightly.
+
+"I think you have defined the perfect man," she said, turning the leaves
+of her book.
+
+The next morning she was admitted to an audience with that paragon of
+paragons, Henry Hamilton Bones.
+
+He lived in the largest of the Houssa huts at the far end of the lines,
+and had for attendants two native women, for whom Bones had framed the
+most stringent and regimental of orders.
+
+The girl paused in the porch of the hut to read the typewritten
+regulations which were fastened by drawing-pins to a green baize board.
+
+They were bi-lingual, being in English and in coast Arabic, in which
+dialect Bones was something of a master. The girl wondered why they
+should be in English.
+
+"Absolutely necessary, dear old lady friend," explained Bones firmly.
+"You've no idea what a lot of anxiety I have had. Your dear old
+brother--God bless him!--is a topping old sport, but with children you
+can't be too careful, and Ham is awfully thoughtless. There, I've said
+it!"
+
+The English part of the regulations was brief, and she read it through.
+
+                    HENRY HAMILTON BONES (Care of).
+
+     1. Visitors are requested to make as little noise as possible. How
+     would you like to be awakened from refreshing sleep! Be unselfish,
+     and put yourself in his place.
+
+     2. It is absolutely forbidden to feed the child except with
+     articles a list of which may be obtained on application. Nuts and
+     chocolates are strictly forbidden.
+
+     3. The undersigned will not be responsible for articles broken by
+     the child, such as watches. If watches are used to amuse child,
+     they should be held by child's ear, when an interested expression
+     will be observed on child's face. On no account should child be
+     allowed--knowing no better--to bite watch, owing to danger from
+     glass, minute hand, etc.
+
+     4. In lifting child, grasp above waist under arms and raise slowly,
+     taking care that head does not fall back. Bring child close to
+     holder's body, passing left arm under child and right arm over.
+     Child should not be encouraged to sit up--though quite able to,
+     being very forward for eight months--owing to strain on back. On no
+     account should child be thrown up in the air and caught.
+
+     5. Any further information can be obtained at Hut 7.
+
+               (Signed)
+
+                     AUGUSTUS TIBBETTS, Lieutenant.
+
+"All based upon my personal observation and experience," said Bones
+triumphantly--"not a single tip from anybody."
+
+"I think you are really marvellous, Bones," said the girl, and meant it.
+
+Henry Hamilton Bones sat upright in a wooden cot. A fat-faced atom of
+brown humanity, bald-headed and big-eyed, he sucked his thumb and stared
+at the visitor, and from the visitor to Bones.
+
+Bones he regarded with an intelligent interest which dissolved into a
+fat chuckle of sheer delight.
+
+"Isn't it--isn't it simply extraordinary?" demanded Bones ecstatically.
+"In all your long an' painful experience, dear old friend an' co-worker,
+have you ever seen anything like it? When you remember that babies don't
+open their eyes until three weeks after they're born----"
+
+"Da!" said Henry Hamilton Bones.
+
+"Da yourself, Henry!" squawked his foster-father.
+
+"Do da!" said Henry.
+
+The smile vanished from Bones's face, and he bit his lip thoughtfully.
+
+"Do da!" he repeated. "Let me see, what is 'do da'?"
+
+"Do da!" roared Henry.
+
+"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said gently, "I don't know whether Henry
+wants a drink or whether he has a pain in his stomach, but I think that
+we had better leave him in more experienced hands."
+
+He nodded fiercely to the native woman nurse and made his exit.
+
+Outside they heard Henry's lusty yell, and Bones put his hand to his ear
+and listened with a strained expression on his face.
+
+Presently the tension passed.
+
+"It _was_ a drink," said Bones. "Excuse me whilst I make a note." He
+pulled out his pocket-book and wrote: "'Do da' means 'child wants
+drink.'"
+
+He walked back to the Residency with her, giving her a remarkable
+insight into Henry's vocabulary. It appeared that babies have a language
+of their own, which Bones boasted that he had almost mastered.
+
+She lay awake for a very long time that night, thinking of Bones, his
+simplicity and his lovableness. She thought, too, of Sanders, grave,
+aloof, and a little shy, and wondered....
+
+She woke with a start, to hear the voice of Bones outside the window.
+She felt sure that something had happened to Henry. Then she heard
+Sanders and her brother speaking, and realized that it was not Henry
+they were discussing.
+
+She looked at her watch--it was three o'clock.
+
+"I was foolish to trust that fellow," Sanders was saying, "and I know
+that Bosambo is not to blame, because he has always given a very wide
+berth to the Kulumbini people, though they live on his border."
+
+She heard him speak in a strange tongue to some unknown fourth, and
+guessed that a spy of the Government had come in during the night.
+
+"We'll get away as quickly as we can, Bones," Sanders said. "We can take
+our chance with the lower river in the dark; it will be daylight before
+we reach the bad shoals. You need not come, Hamilton."
+
+"Do you think Bones will be able to do all you want?" Hamilton's tone
+was dubious.
+
+"Pull yourself together, dear old officer," said Bones, raising his
+voice to an insubordinate pitch.
+
+She heard the men move from the verandah, and fell asleep again,
+wondering who was the man they spoke of and what mischief he had been
+brewing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a little tributary stream, which is hidden by the island of bats, was
+the village of Kulumbini. High elephant grass hid the poor huts even
+from they who navigate a cautious way along the centre of the narrow
+stream. On the shelving beach one battered old canoe of ironwood, with
+its sides broken and rusted, the indolence of its proprietor made plain
+by the badly spliced panels, was all that told the stranger that the
+habitations of man were nigh.
+
+Kulumbini was a term of reproach along the great river and amongst the
+people of the Akasava, the Isisi, and the N'gombi, no less than among
+that most tolerant of tribes the Ochori. They were savage people,
+immensely brave, terrible in battle, but more terrible after.
+
+Kulumbini, the village and city of the tribe, was no more than an
+outlier of a fairly important tribe which occupied forest land
+stretching back to the Ochori boundary. Their territory knew no frontier
+save the frontiers of caprice and desire. They had neither nationality
+nor national ambition, and would sell their spears for a bunch of fish,
+as the saying goes. Their one consuming passion and one great wish was
+that they should not be overlooked, and, so long as the tribes respected
+this eccentricity, the Kulumbini distressed no man.
+
+How this desire for isolation arose, none know. It is certain that once
+upon a time they possessed a king who so shared their views that he
+never came amongst them, but lived in a forest place which is called to
+this day S'furi-S'foosi, "The trees (or glade) of the distant king."
+They had demurred at Government inspection, and Sanders, coming up the
+little river on the first of his visits, was greeted by a shower of
+arrows, and his landing opposed by locked shields.
+
+There are many ways of disposing of opposition, not the least important
+of which is to be found in two big brass-barrelled guns which have their
+abiding place at each end of the _Zaire's_ bridge. There is also a
+method known as peaceful suasion. Sanders had compromised by going
+ashore for a peace palaver with a revolver in each hand.
+
+He had a whole fund of Bomongo stories, most of which are unfit for
+printing, but which, nevertheless, find favour amongst the primitive
+humorists of the Great River. By parable and story, by nonsense tale and
+romance, by drawing upon his imagination to supply himself with facts,
+by invoking ju-jus, ghosts, devils, and all the armoury of native
+superstition, he had, in those far-off times, prevailed upon the people
+of Kulumbini not only to allow him a peaceful entrance to their country,
+but--wonder of wonders!--to contribute, when the moon and tide were in
+certain relative positions, which in English means once every six
+months, a certain tithe or tax, which might consist of rubber, ivory,
+fish, or manioc, according to the circumstances of the people.
+
+More than this, he stamped a solemn treaty--he wrote it in a tattered
+laundry-book which had come into the chief's possession by some
+mysterious means--and he hung about the neck of Gulabala, the titular
+lord of these strange people, the medal and chain of chieftainship.
+
+Not to be outdone in courtesy, the chief offered him the choice of all
+the maidens of Kulumbini, and Sanders, to whom such offers were by no
+means novel, had got out of a delicate situation in his usual manner,
+having resort to witchcraft for the purpose. For he said, with due
+solemnity and hushed breath, that it had been predicted by a celebrated
+witch-doctor of the lower river that the next wife he should take to
+himself would die of the sickness-mongo, and said Sanders--
+
+"My heart is too tender for your people, O Chief, to lead one of your
+beautiful daughters to death."
+
+"O Sandi," replied Gulabala hopefully, "I have many daughters, and I
+should not miss one. And would it not be good service for a woman of my
+house to die in your hut?"
+
+"We see things differently, you and I," said Sanders, "for, according to
+my religion, if any woman dies from witchcraft, her ghost sits for ever
+at the foot of my bed, making terrifying faces."
+
+Thus Sanders had made his escape, and had received at odd intervals the
+tribute of these remote people.
+
+For years they had dwelt without interference, for they were an unlucky
+people to quarrel with, and, save for one or two trespasses on the part
+of Gulabala, there was no complaint made concerning them. It is not
+natural, however, for native people to prosper, as these folks did,
+without there growing up a desire to kill somebody. For does not the
+river saying run: "The last measure of a full granary is a measure of
+blood"?
+
+In the dead of a night Gulabala took three hundred spears across the
+frontier to the Ochori village of Netcka, and returned at dawned with
+the spears all streaky. And he brought back with him some twenty women,
+who would have sung the death-song of their men but for the fact that
+Gulabala and his warriors beat them.
+
+Gulabala slept all the day, he and his spears, and woke to a grisly
+vision of consequence.
+
+He called his people together and spoke in this wise--
+
+"Soon Sandi and his headmen will come, and, if we are here, there will
+be many folk hanged, for Sandi is a cruel man. Therefore let us go to a
+far place in the forest, carrying our treasure, and when Sandi has
+forgiven us, we will come back."
+
+A good plan but for the sad fact that Bosambo of the Ochori was less
+than fifty miles away at the dawn of that fatal day, and was marching
+swiftly to avenge his losses, for not only had Gulabala taken women, but
+he had taken sixty goats, and that was unpardonable.
+
+The scouts which Gulabala had sent out came back with the news that the
+way to sanctuary was barred by Bosambo.
+
+Now, of all the men that the Kulumbini hated, they hated none more than
+the Chief of the Ochori. For he alone never scrupled to overlook them,
+and to dare their anger by flogging such of them as raided his territory
+in search of game.
+
+"Ko," said Gulabala, deeply concerned, "this Bosambo is Sandi's dog. Let
+us go back to our village and say we have been hunting, for Bosambo will
+not cross into our lands for fear of Sandi's anger."
+
+They reached the village, and were preparing to remove the last evidence
+of their crime--one goat looks very much like another, but women can
+speak--when Sanders came striding down the village street, and Gulabala,
+with his curved execution knife in his hand, stood up by the side of the
+woman he had slain.
+
+"O Gulabala," said Sanders softly, "this is an evil thing."
+
+The chief looked left and right helplessly.
+
+"Lord," he said huskily, "Bosambo and his people put me to shame, for
+they spied on me and overlooked me. And we are proud people, who must
+not be overlooked--thus it has been for all time."
+
+Sanders pursed his lips and stared at the man.
+
+"I see here a fine high tree," he said, "so high that he who hangs from
+its top branch may say that no man overlooks him. There you shall hang,
+Gulabala, for your proud men to see, before they also go to work for my
+King, with chains upon their legs as long as they live."
+
+"Lord," said Gulabala philosophically, "I have lived."
+
+Ten minutes later he went the swift way which bad chiefs go, and his
+people were unresentful spectators.
+
+"This is the tenth time I have had to find a new chief in this belt,"
+said Sanders, pacing the deck of the _Zaire_, "and who on earth I am to
+put in his place I do not know."
+
+The _lokalis_ of the Kulumbini were already calling headmen to grand
+palaver. In the shade of the reed-thatched _lokali_ house, before the
+hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of
+ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and
+falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble.
+
+Bosambo came--by the river route--as Sanders was leaving the _Zaire_ to
+attend the momentous council.
+
+"How say you, Bosambo--what man of the Kulumbini folk will hold these
+people in check?"
+
+Bosambo squatted at his lord's feet and set his spear a-spinning.
+
+"Lord," he confessed, "I know of none, for they are a strange and
+hateful people. Whatever king you set above them they will despise. Also
+they worship no gods or ghosts, nor have they ju-ju or fetish. And, if a
+man does not believe, how may you believe him? Lord, this I say to
+you--set me above the Kulumbini, and I will change their hearts."
+
+But Sanders shook his head.
+
+"That may not be, Bosambo," he said.
+
+The palaver was a long and weary one. There were twelve good claimants
+for the vacant stool of office, and behind the twelve there were kinsmen
+and spears.
+
+From sunset to nigh on sunrise they debated the matter, and Sanders sat
+patiently through it all, awake and alert. Whether this might be said of
+Bones is questionable. Bones swears that he did not sleep, and spent
+the night, chin in hand, turning over the problem in his mind.
+
+It is certain he was awake when Sanders gave his summing up.
+
+"People of this land," said Sanders, "four fires have been burnt since
+we met, and I have listened to all your words. Now, you know how good it
+is that there should be one you call chief. Yet, if I take you,
+M'loomo"--he turned to one sullen claimant--"there will be war. And if I
+take B'songi, there will be killing. And I have come to this mind--that
+I will appoint a king over you who shall not dwell with you nor overlook
+you."
+
+Two hundred pairs of eyes watched the Commissioner's face. He saw the
+gleam of satisfaction which came at this concession to the traditional
+characteristic of the tribe, and went on, almost completely sure of his
+ground.
+
+"He shall dwell far away, and you, the twelve kinsmen of Gulabala, shall
+reign in his place--one at every noon shall sit in the chief's chair and
+keep the land for your king, who shall dwell with me."
+
+One of the prospective regents rose.
+
+"Lord, that is good talk, for so did Sakalaba, the great king of our
+race, live apart from us at S'furi-S'foosi, and were we not prosperous
+in those days? Now tell us what man you will set over us."
+
+For one moment Sanders was nonplussed. He was rapidly reviewing the
+qualifications of all the little chiefs, the headmen, and the fisher
+leaders who sat under him, and none fulfilled his requirements.
+
+In that moment of silence an agitated voice whispered in his ear, and
+Bones's lean hand clutched his sleeve.
+
+"Sir an' Excellency," breathed Bones, all of a twitter, "don't think I'm
+takin' advantage of my position, but it's the chance I've been lookin'
+for, sir. You'd do me an awful favour--you see, sir, I've got his career
+to consider----"
+
+"What on earth----" began Sanders.
+
+"Henry Hamilton Bones, sir," said Bones tremulously. "You'd set him up
+for life, sir. I must think of the child, hang it all! I know I'm a
+jolly old rotter to put my spoke in----"
+
+Sanders gently released the frenzied grip of his lieutenant, and faced
+the wondering palaver.
+
+"Know all people that this day I give to you as king one whom you shall
+call M'songuri, which means in your tongue 'The Young and the Wise,' and
+who is called in my tongue N'risu M'ilitani Tibbetti, and this one is a
+child and well beloved by my lord Tibbetti, being to him as a son, and
+by M'ilitani and by me, Sandi."
+
+He raised his hand in challenge.
+
+"Wa! Whose men are you?" he cried.
+
+"M'songuri!"
+
+The answer came in a deep-throated growl, and the assembly leapt to its
+feet.
+
+"Wa! Who rules this land?"
+
+"M'songuri!"
+
+They locked arms and stamped first with the right foot and then with the
+left, in token of their acceptance.
+
+"Take your king," said Sanders, "and build him a beautiful hut, and his
+spirit shall dwell with you. This palaver is finished."
+
+Bones was speechless all the way down river. At irregular intervals he
+would grip Sanders's hand, but he was too full for speech.
+
+Hamilton and his sister met the law-givers on the quay.
+
+"You're back sooner than I expected you, sir," said Hamilton. "Did Bones
+behave?"
+
+"Like a little gentleman," said Sanders.
+
+"Oh, Bones," Patricia broke in eagerly, "Henry has cut another tooth."
+
+Bones's nod was grave and even distant.
+
+"I will go and see His Majesty," he said. "I presume he is in the
+palace?"
+
+Hamilton stared after him.
+
+"Surely," he asked irritably, "Bones isn't sickening for measles again?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE TAMER OF BEASTS
+
+
+Native folk, at any rate, are but children of a larger growth. In the
+main, their delinquencies may be classified under the heading of
+"naughtiness." They are mischievous and passionate, and they have a
+weakness for destroying things to discover the secrets of volition. A
+too prosperous nation mystifies less fortunate people, who demand of
+their elders and rulers some solution of the mystery of their rivals'
+progress. Such a ruler, unable to offer the necessary explanation, takes
+his spears to the discovery, and sometimes discovers too much for his
+happiness.
+
+The village of Jumburu stands on the edge of the bush country, where the
+lawless men of all nations dwell. This territory is filled with fierce
+communities, banded together against a common enemy--the law. They call
+this land the B'wigini, which means "the Nationless," and Jumburu's
+importance lies in the fact that it is the outpost of order and
+discipline.
+
+In Jumburu were two brothers, O'ka and B'suru, who had usurped the
+chieftainship of their uncle, the very famous K'sungasa, "very famous,"
+since he had been in his time a man of remarkable gifts, which he still
+retained to some extent, and in consequence enjoyed what was left of
+life.
+
+He was, by all accounts, as mad as a man could be, and in circumstances
+less favourable to himself his concerned relatives would have taken him
+a long journey into the forest he loved so well, and they would have put
+out his eyes and left him to the mercy of the beasts, such being the
+method of dealing with lunacy amongst people who, all unknown to
+themselves, were eugenists of a most inflexible kind.
+
+But to leave K'sungasa to the beasts would have been equivalent to
+delivering him to the care of his dearest friends, for he had an
+affinity for the wild dwellers of the bush, and all his life he had
+lived amongst them and loved them.
+
+It is said that he could arrest the parrot in the air by a "cl'k!" and
+could bring the bird screeching and fluttering to his hand. He could
+call the shy little monkeys from the high branches where they hid, and
+even the fiercest of buffaloes would at his word come snuffling and
+nosing his brown arm.
+
+So that, when he grew weak-minded, his relatives, after a long palaver,
+decided that for once the time-honoured customs of the land should be
+overridden, and since there was no other method of treating the blind
+but that prescribed by precedent, he should be allowed to live in a
+great hut at the edge of the village with his birds and snakes and
+wild cats, and that the direction of village affairs should pass to his
+nephews.
+
+Mr. Commissioner Sanders knew all this, but did nothing. His task was to
+govern the territory, which meant to so direct affairs that the
+territory governed itself. When the fate of K'sungasa was in the
+balance, he sent word to the chief's nephews that he was somewhere in
+the neighbourhood, and that the revival of the bad old custom of
+blinding would be followed by the introduction of the bad new custom of
+hanging; but this had less effect upon the council of relatives--to whom
+Sanders's message was not transmitted--than the strange friendship which
+K'sungasa had for the forest folk.
+
+The nephews might have governed the village, exacted tribute,
+apportioned fishing rights, and administered justice for all time, but
+for the fact that there came a period of famine, when crops were bad and
+fish was scarce, and when, remarkably enough, the village of L'bini,
+distant no more than a few hours' paddling, had by a curious coincident
+raised record crops, and had, moreover, a glut of fish in their waters.
+
+There was the inevitable palaver and the inevitable solution. O'ka and
+B'suru led ten canoes to the offending village, slaughtered a few men
+and burnt a few huts. For two hours the combatants pranced and yelled
+and thrust at one another amidst a pandemonium of screaming women, and
+then Lieutenant Tibbetts dropped from the clouds with a most substantial
+platoon of Houssas, and there was a general sorting out.
+
+Sanders held a court on one of the middle islands near the Residency,
+and B'suru was sent to the Village of Irons for the term of his natural
+life. O'ka, who had fled to the bush, escaped, however, and with him a
+headman and a few followers.
+
+Lieutenant Tibbetts, who had spent two profitable days in the village of
+Jumburu, came back to the Residency a very thoughtful young man.
+
+"What is the matter with Bones?" asked Captain Hamilton.
+
+His sister smiled over her book, but offered no other comment.
+
+"Do you know, Pat?" demanded Hamilton sternly.
+
+Sanders looked at the girl with a twinkle in his grey eyes, and lit a
+cheroot. The relationships between Patricia Hamilton and Bones were a
+source of constant joy to him. Taciturn and a thought dour as he was,
+Pat would never have suspected the bubbling laughter which arose behind
+that lean brown face, unmovable and, in his moments of most intense
+enjoyment, expressionless.
+
+"Bones and I have a feud," said the girl.
+
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"Not as violent a feud as O'ka and I have, I hope?" he said.
+
+She frowned a little and looked at him anxiously.
+
+"But you don't worry about the threats of the people you have punished?"
+she asked.
+
+"I haven't punished O'ka," said Sanders, "and an expedition into the
+bush would be too expensive an affair. He has apparently settled with
+the B'wigini people. If they take up his feud, they might give trouble.
+But what is your trouble with Bones?"
+
+"You must ask him," she said.
+
+Hamilton's opportunity came next day, when Bones applied for leave.
+
+"Leave?" said Captain Hamilton incredulously. "Leave, Bones? What the
+dickens do you want leave for?"
+
+Bones, standing as stiff as a ramrod before the office table at which
+his superior sat, saluted.
+
+"Urgent private affairs, sir," he said gruffly.
+
+"But you haven't any private affairs," protested Hamilton. "Your life is
+an open book--you were bragging about that fact yesterday."
+
+"Sir and brother-officer," said Bones firmly, "a crisis has arisen in my
+young life. My word, sir, has been called into doubt by your jolly old
+sister. I desire to vindicate my honour, my reputation, an' my
+veracity."
+
+"Pat has been pulling your leg!" suggested Hamilton, but Bones shook his
+head.
+
+"Nothin' so indelicate, sir. Your revered an' lovely relative--God
+bless her jolly old heart!--expressed her doubt in _re_ leopards an'
+buffaloes. I'm goin' out, sir, into the wilds--amidst dangers, Ham, old
+feller, that only seasoned veterans like you an' me can imagine--to
+bring proof that I am not only a sportsman, but a gentleman."
+
+The timely arrival of Miss Patricia Hamilton, very beautiful in dazzling
+white, with her solar helmet perched at an angle, smote Bones to
+silence.
+
+"What have you been saying to Bones?" asked Hamilton severely.
+
+"She said----"
+
+"I said----"
+
+They began and finished together.
+
+"Bones, you're a tell-tale," accused the girl.
+
+"Go on," said Bones recklessly. "Don't spare me. I'm a liar an' a thief
+an' a murderer--don't mind me!"
+
+"I simply said that I didn't believe he shot the leopard--the one whose
+skin is in his hut."
+
+"Oh, no," said Bones, with heavy sarcasm, "I didn't shoot it--oh, no! I
+froze it to death--I poisoned it!"
+
+"But did you shoot it?" she asked.
+
+"Did I shoot it, dear old Ham?" asked Bones, with great calmness.
+
+"Did you?" asked Hamilton innocently.
+
+"Did I shoot at that leopard," Bones went on deliberately, "an' was he
+found next mornin' cold an' dead, with a smile on his naughty old
+face?"
+
+Hamilton nodded, and Bones faced the girl expectantly.
+
+"Apologize, child," he said.
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," she replied, with some heat. "Did
+Bones shoot the leopard?"
+
+She appealed to her brother.
+
+Hamilton looked from one to the other.
+
+"When the leopard was found----" he began.
+
+"Listen to this, dear old sister," murmured Bones.
+
+"When the leopard was found, with a spear in its side----"
+
+"Evidently done after death by a wanderin' cad of a native," interposed
+Bones hastily.
+
+"Be quiet, Bones," commanded the girl, and Bones shrugged his shoulders
+and obeyed.
+
+"When the leopard was found," continued Hamilton, "he was certainly
+beyond human aid, and though no bullet mark was discovered, Bones
+conclusively proved----"
+
+"One moment, dear old officer," interrupted Bones. He had seen out of
+the tail of his eye a majestic figure crossing the square.
+
+"Will you allow me to produce scientific an' expert evidence?"
+
+Hamilton assented gravely, and Bones went to the door of the orderly
+room and roared a name.
+
+"I shall produce," he said quietly, but firmly, "the evidence of one
+who enjoyed the confidence of dear old Professor What's-his-name, the
+eminent thigumy-ologist. Oh, Ali!"
+
+Ali Abid, a solemn figure, salaamed in the doorway.
+
+Not for nothing had he been factotum to a great bacteriologist before
+the demise of his master had driven him to service with a lieutenant of
+Houssas. His vocabulary smelt of the laboratory, his English was pure,
+undefiled, and unusual.
+
+"Ali, you remember my leopard?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, shaking his head, "who can forget?"
+
+"Did I kill him, Ali?" asked Bones. "Tell the lady everything."
+
+Ali bowed to the girl.
+
+"Miss or madame," he said, "the leopard (_Felis pardus_), a wild beast
+of the Felidae family, is indigenous to forest territory. The subject in
+question--to wit, the skin thereof exhibited by Sir Bones--was
+particularly ferocious, and departed this life as a result of hunting
+conducted by aforesaid. Examination of subject after demise under most
+scientific scrutiny revealed that said leopard (_Felis pardus_) suffered
+from weak heart, and primary cause of death was diagnosed as shock
+occasioned by large 'bang' from Sir Bones's rifle."
+
+"What did I say?" asked Bones complacently.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," gasped the girl, "that you _frightened_ the
+leopard to death?"
+
+Bones spread out his hands disparagingly.
+
+"You have heard the evidence, dear old sister," he said; "there is
+nothing to add."
+
+She threw back her head and laughed until her grey eyes were swimming in
+tears.
+
+"Oh, Bones, you humbug!" she laughed.
+
+Bones drew himself up more stiffly than ever, stuck his monocle in his
+eye, and turned to his chief.
+
+"Do I understand, sir," he said, "that my leave is granted?"
+
+"Seven days," said Hamilton, and Bones swung round on his heel, knocked
+over Hamilton's stationery rack, stumbled over a chair, and strode
+gloomily from the hut.
+
+When Patricia Hamilton woke the next morning, she found a note pinned to
+her pillow.
+
+We may gloss over the impropriety of the proceedings which led to
+this phenomenon. Bones was an artist, and so small a matter as the
+proprieties did not come into his calculations.
+
+Patricia sat up in bed and read the letter.
+
+     "DEAR OLD FRIEND AND DOUTTING THOS."
+     (Bones's spelling was always perfectly disgraceful),--
+
+     "When this reaches you, when this reaches you, I shall be far, far
+     away on my long and dangerus journey. I may not come back, I may
+     not come back, for I and a faithful servant are about to penetrate
+     to the lares of the wild beasts of the forest, of the forest. I am
+     determined to wipe out the reproach which you have made. I will
+     bring back, not a dead leppard, not a dead leppard, but a live one,
+     which I shall seeze with my own hands. I may lose my life in this
+     rash and hazardus enterprise, but at least I shall vindycate my
+     honour.--Farewell, dear old Patrisia.
+
+                               "Your friend,
+
+                                    "B."
+
+"Which proves," said Hamilton, when he was shown the letter, "that Bones
+is learning to spell. It only seems yesterday when he was spelling
+'Hamilton' with three m's. By the way, how did you get this letter?"
+
+"I found it pinned to the door," said Patricia tactfully.
+
+Bones went by the shortest route to Jumburu, and was received without
+enthusiasm, for he had left a new chief to rule over a people who were
+near enough to the B'wigini to resent overmuch discipline. But his
+business was with K'sungasa, for the two days' stay which Bones had made
+in the village, and all that he had learnt of the old tamer, had been
+responsible for his reckless promise to Patricia Hamilton.
+
+He came at a critical moment, for K'sungasa, a thin and knobbly old man,
+with dim eyes and an incessant chuckle, was very near his end. He lay
+on a fine raised bed, a big yellow-eyed wild cat at his feet, a monkey
+or two shivering by the bedside, and a sprawling litter of kittens--to
+which the wild cat leapt in a tremble of rage when Bones entered the
+hut--crawling in the sunlight which flooded the hut.
+
+"Lord Tibbetti," croaked the old man, "I see you! This is a good time,
+for to-morrow I should be dead."
+
+"K'sungasa," said Bones, seating himself gingerly, and looking about for
+the snake which was usually coiled round the old man's stool, "that is
+foolish talk, for you will see many floods."
+
+"That is fine talk for the river folk," grinned the old man, "but not
+for we people of the forest, who never see flood and only little-little
+rivers. Now, I tell you, lord, that I am glad to die, because I have
+been full of mad thoughts for a long time, but now my mind is clear.
+Tell me, master, why you come."
+
+Bones explained his errand, and the old man's eyes brightened.
+
+"Lord, if I could go with you to the forest, I would bring to you many
+beautiful leopards by my magic. Now, because I love Sandi, I will do
+this for you, so that you shall know how wise and cunning I am."
+
+In the woods about the village was a wild plant, the seeds of which,
+when pounded and boiled in an earthen vessel, produced, by a rough
+method of distillation, a most pungent liquid. Abid spoke learnedly of
+_pimpinella anisum_, and probably he was right.[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: Both anise and star anise (_Illicium anisatum_) are to be
+found in the Territories, as also is a small plant which has all the
+properties (and more) of _Pimpinella anisum_. This was probably the
+plant.--AUTHOR.]
+
+Bones and his assistant made many excursions into the woods before they
+found and brought back the right plant. Fortunately it was seed-time,
+and once he was on the right track Bones had no difficulty in securing
+more than a sufficient quantity for his purpose.
+
+He made his distillation under the old man's directions, the fire
+burning in the middle of the hut. As the drops began to fall from the
+narrow neck of his retort, a fault sweet aroma filled the hut. First the
+cat, then the monkeys began to show signs of extraordinary agitation.
+Cat and kittens crouched as near the fire as they could, their heads
+craned towards the brown vessel, mewing and whimpering. Then the monkeys
+came, bright-eyed and eager.
+
+The scent brought the most unexpected beasts from every hole and crevice
+in the hut--brown rats, squirrels, a long black snake with spade-shaped
+head and diamond markings, little bush hares, a young buck, which came
+crashing through the forest and prinked timidly to the door of the hut.
+
+The old man on the bed called them all by name, and snapped his feeble
+fingers to them; but their eyes were on the retort and the crystal
+drops that trembled and fell from the lip of the narrow spout.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A week later a speechless group stood before the Residency and focussed
+their astonished gaze upon the miracle.
+
+"The miracle" was a half-grown leopard cub, vividly marked. He was
+muzzled and held in leash by a chain affixed to a stout collar, and
+Bones, a picture of smug gratification, held the end of the chain.
+
+"But how--how did you catch him?" gasped the girl.
+
+Bones shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It is not for me, dear old friend, to tell of nights spent in the
+howlin' forest," he quavered, in the squeaky tone which invariably came
+to him when he was excited. "I'm not goin' to speak of myself. If you
+expect me to tell you how I trailed the jolly old leopard to his grisly
+lair an' fought with him single-handed, you'll be disappointed."
+
+"But did you track him to his lair?" demanded Hamilton, recovering his
+speech.
+
+"I beg of you, dear old officer, to discuss other matters," evaded Bones
+tactfully. "Here are the goods delivered, as per mine of the
+twenty-fourth instant."
+
+He put his hand to his pocket mechanically, and the cub looked up with a
+quick eager stare.
+
+"Bones, you're a wonderful fellow," said Sanders quietly.
+
+Bones bowed.
+
+"And now," he said, "if you'll excuse me, I'll take my little friend to
+his new home."
+
+Before they realized what he was doing, he had slipped off the chain.
+Even Sanders stepped back and dropped his hand to the automatic pistol
+he carried in his hip pocket.
+
+But Bones, unconcerned, whistled and marched off to his hut, and the
+great cat followed humbly at his heels.
+
+That same night Bones strode across from his hut to the Residency,
+resolved upon a greater adventure yet. He would go out under the
+admiring eyes of Patricia Hamilton, and would return from the Residency
+woods a veritable Pied Piper, followed by a trail of forest denizens.
+
+In his pocket was a quart bottle, and his clothes reeked with the scent
+of wild aniseed. As a matter of fact, his secret would have been out the
+moment he entered Sanders's dining-room, but it so happened that his
+programme was doomed to interruption.
+
+He was half-way across the square when a dark figure rose from the
+ground and a harsh voice grunted "Kill!"
+
+He saw the flash of the spear in the starlight and leapt aside. A hand
+clutched at his jacket, but he wrenched himself free, leaving the
+garment in his assailant's hands.
+
+He was unarmed, and there was nothing left but flight.
+
+Sanders heard his yell, and sprang out to the darkness of the verandah
+as Bones flew up the steps.
+
+He saw the two men racing in pursuit, and fired twice. One man fell, the
+other swerved and was lost in the shadows.
+
+An answering shot came from the Houssa sentry at the far end of the
+square. Sanders saw a man running, and fired again, and again missed.
+
+Then out of the darkness blundered Ali Abid, his face grey with fear.
+
+"Sir," he gasped, "wild animal (_Felis pardus_) has divested muzzlement
+and proper restraint, and is chasing various subjects outrageously."
+
+Even as he spoke a fourth figure sped across the ground before the
+Residency, so close that they could see the bundle he carried under his
+arm.
+
+"My jacket!" roared Bones. "Hi, stop him! Good Lord!"
+
+Swift on the heels of the flying man came a streak of yellow fur....
+
+Whether O'ka of the Jumburu outpaced the leopard, or the leopard
+overtook O'ka, is not known, but until the rains came and washed away
+the scent of crude aniseed, Bones dared not leave his hut by night for
+fear of the strange beasts that came snuffling at his hut, or sat in
+expectant and watchful circles about his dwelling, howling dismally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE MERCENARIES
+
+
+There was a large brown desk in Sanders's study, a desk the edges of
+which had been worn yellow with constant rubbing. It was a very tidy
+desk, with two rows of books neatly grouped on the left and on the
+right, and held in place by brass rails. There were three tiers of wire
+baskets, a great white blotting-pad, a silver inkstand and four
+clean-looking pens.
+
+Lately, there had appeared a glass vase filled with flowers which were
+daily renewed. Except on certain solemn occasions, none intruded into
+this holy of holies. It is true that a change had been brought about by
+the arrival of Patricia Hamilton, for she had been accorded permission
+to use the study as she wished, and she it was who had introduced the
+floral decorations.
+
+Yet, such was the tradition of sanctuary which enveloped the study, that
+neither Captain Hamilton, her brother, nor Bones, her slave, had ever
+ventured to intrude thither in search of her, and if by chance they came
+to the door to speak to her, they unaccountably lowered their voices.
+
+On a certain summer morning, Hamilton sat at the desk, a stern and sober
+figure, and Bones, perspiring and rattled, sat on the edge of a chair
+facing him.
+
+The occasion was a solemn one, for Bones was undergoing his examination
+in subjects "X" and "Y" for promotion to the rank of Captain. The
+particular subject under discussion was "Map Reading and Field
+Sketching," and the inquisition was an oral one.
+
+"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton gravely, "you will please define a
+Base Line."
+
+Bones pushed back the hair straggling over his forehead, and blinked
+rapidly in an effort of memory.
+
+"A base line, dear old officer?" he repeated. "A base line, dear old
+Ham----"
+
+"Restrain your endearing terms," said Hamilton, "you won't get any extra
+marks for 'em."
+
+"A base line?" mused Bones; then, "Whoop! I've got it! God bless your
+jolly old soul! I thought I'd foozled it. A base line," he said loudly,
+"is the difference of level between two adjacent contours. How's that,
+umpire?"
+
+"Wrong," said Hamilton; "you're describing a Vertical Interval."
+
+Bones glared at him.
+
+"Are you sure, dear old chap?" he demanded truculently. "Have a look at
+the book, jolly old friend, your poor old eyes ain't what they used to
+be----"
+
+"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton in ponderous reproof, "you are
+behaving very strangely."
+
+"Look here, dear old Ham," wheedled Bones "can't you pretend you asked
+me what a Vertical Interval was?"
+
+Hamilton reached round to find something to throw, but this was
+Sanders's study.
+
+"You have a criminal mind, Bones," he said helplessly. "Now get on with
+it. What are 'Hachures'?"
+
+"Hachures?" said Bones, shutting his eye. "Hachures? Now I know what
+Hachures are. A lot of people would think they were chickens, but I
+know ... they're a sort of line ... when you're drawing a hill ...
+wiggly-waggly lines ... you know the funny things ... a sort of...."
+Bones made mysterious and erratic gestures in the air, "shading ...
+water, dear old friend."
+
+"Are you feeling faint?" asked Hamilton, jumping up in alarm.
+
+"No, silly ass ... shadings ... direction of water--am I right, sir?"
+
+"Not being a thought-reader I can't visualize your disordered mind,"
+said Hamilton, "but Hachures are the conventional method of representing
+hill features by shading in short vertical lines to indicate the slope
+and the water flow. I gather that you have a hazy idea of what the
+answer should be."
+
+"I thank you, dear old sir, for that generous tribute to my grasp
+of military science," said Bones. "An' now proceed to the next
+torture--which will you have, sir, rack or thumbscrew?--oh, thank
+you, Horace, I'll have a glass of boiling oil."
+
+"Shut up talking to yourself," growled Hamilton, "and tell me what is
+meant by 'Orienting a Map'?"
+
+"Turning it to the east," said Bones promptly. "Next, sir."
+
+"What is meant by 'Orienting a Map'?" asked Hamilton patiently.
+
+"I've told you once," said Bones defiantly.
+
+"Orienting a Map," said Hamilton, "as I have explained to you a thousand
+times, means setting your map or plane-table so that the north line lies
+north."
+
+"In that case, sir," said Bones firmly, "the east line would be east,
+and I claim to have answered the question to your entire satisfaction."
+
+"Continue to claim," snarled Hamilton. "I shall mark you zero for that
+answer."
+
+"Make it one," pleaded Bones. "Be a sport, dear old Ham--I've found a
+new fishin' pool."
+
+Hamilton hesitated.
+
+"There never are any fish in the pools you find," he said dubiously.
+"Anyway, I'll reserve my decision until I've made a cast or two."
+
+They adjourned for tiffin soon after.
+
+"How did you do, Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton.
+
+"Fine," said Bones enthusiastically; "I simply bowled over every
+question that your dear old brother asked. In fact, Ham admitted that I
+knew much more about some things than he did."
+
+"What I said," corrected Hamilton, "was that your information on certain
+subjects was so novel that I doubted whether even the staff college
+shared it."
+
+"It's the same thing," said Bones.
+
+"You should try him on military history," suggested Sanders dryly. "I've
+just been hearing from Bosambo----"
+
+Bones coughed and blushed.
+
+"The fact is, sir an' Excellency," he confessed, "I was practisin' on
+Bosambo. You mightn't be aware of the fact, but I like to hear myself
+speak----"
+
+"No!" gasped Hamilton in amazement, "you're wronging yourself, Bones!"
+
+"What I mean, sir," Bones went on with dignity, "is that if I lecture
+somebody on a subject I remember what I've said."
+
+"Always providing that you understand what you're saying," suggested
+Hamilton.
+
+"Anyway," said Sanders, with his quiet smile, "Bones has filled Bosambo
+with a passionate desire to emulate Napoleon, and Bosambo has been
+making tentative inquiries as to whether he can raise an Old Guard or
+enlist a mercenary army."
+
+"I flatter myself----" began Bones.
+
+"Why not?" said Hamilton, rising. "It's the only chance you'll have of
+hearing something complimentary about yourself."
+
+"_I_ believe in you, Bones," said a smiling Patricia. "I think you're
+really wonderful, and that Ham is a brute."
+
+"I'll never, never contradict you, dear Miss Patricia," said Bones; "an'
+after the jolly old Commissioner has gone----"
+
+"You're not going away again, are you?" she asked, turning to Sanders.
+"Why, you have only just come back from the interior."
+
+There was genuine disappointment in her eyes, and Sanders experienced a
+strange thrill the like of which he had never known before.
+
+"Yes," he said with a nod. "There is a palaver of sorts in the Morjaba
+country--the most curious palaver I have ever been called upon to hold."
+
+And indeed he spoke the truth.
+
+Beyond the frontiers of the Akasava, and separated from all the other
+Territories by a curious bush belt which ran almost in a straight line
+for seventy miles, were the people of Morjaba. They were a folk isolated
+from territorial life, and Sanders saw them once every year and no more
+frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers of taxes
+and law-abiding, having quarrels with none. The bush (reputedly the
+abode of ghosts) was, save at one point, impenetrable. Nature had
+plaited a natural wall on one side, and had given the tribe the
+protection of high mountains to the north and a broad swamp to the
+west.
+
+The fierce storms of passion and hate which burst upon the river at
+intervals and sent thousands of spears to a blooding, were scarcely
+echoed in this sanctuary-land. The marauders of the Great King's country
+to the north never fetched across the smooth moraine of the mountains,
+and the evil people of The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp were held back by the
+treacherous bogland wherein, _cala-cala_, a whole army had been
+swallowed up.
+
+Thus protected, the Morjabian folk grew fat and rich. The land was a
+veritable treasure of Nature, and it is a fact that in the dialect they
+speak, there is no word which means "hunger."[5]
+
+[Footnote 5: It is as curious a fact that amongst the majority of
+cannibal people there is no equivalent for "thank you."--E. W.]
+
+Yet the people of the Morjaba were not without their crises.
+
+S'kobi, the stout chief, held a great court which was attended by ten
+thousand people, for at that court was to be concluded for ever the feud
+between the M'gimi and the M'joro--a feud which went back for the
+greater part of fifty years.
+
+The M'gimi were the traditional warrior tribe, the bearers of arms, and,
+as their name ("The High Lookers") implied, the proudest and most
+exclusive of the people. For every man was the descendant of a chief,
+and it was "easier for fish to walk," as the saying goes, than for a
+man of the M'joro ("The Diggers") to secure admission to the caste.
+Three lateral cuts on either cheek was the mark of the M'gimi--wounds
+made, upon the warrior's initiation to the order, with the razor-edged
+blade of a killing-spear. They lived apart in three camps to the number
+of six thousand men, and for five years from the hour of their
+initiation they neither married nor courted. The M'gimi turned their
+backs to women, and did not suffer their presence in their camps. And if
+any man departed from this austere rule he was taken to the Breaking
+Tree, his four limbs were fractured, and he was hoisted to the lower
+branches, between which a litter was swung, and his regiment sat beneath
+the tree neither eating, drinking nor sleeping until he died. Sometimes
+this was a matter of days. As for the woman who had tempted his eye and
+his tongue, she was a witness.
+
+Thus the M'gimi preserved their traditions of austerity. They were
+famous walkers and jumpers. They threw heavy spears and fought great
+sham-fights, and they did every violent exercise save till the ground.
+
+This was the sum and substance of the complaint which had at last come
+to a head.
+
+S'gono, the spokesman of The Diggers, was a headman of the inner lands,
+and spoke with bitter prejudice, since his own son had been rejected by
+the M'gimi captains as being unworthy.
+
+"Shall we men dig and sow for such as these?" he asked. "Now give a
+judgment, King! Every moon we must take the best of our fruit and the
+finest of our fish. Also so many goats and so much salt, and it is
+swallowed up."
+
+"Yet if I send them away," said the king, "how shall I protect this land
+against the warriors of the Akasava and the evil men of the swamp? Also
+of the Ochori, who are four days' march across good ground?"
+
+"Lord King," said S'gono, "are there no M'gimi amongst us who have
+passed from the camp and have their women and their children? May not
+these take the spear again? And are not we M'joro folk men? By my life!
+I will raise as many spears from The Diggers and captain them with
+M'joro men--this I could do between the moons and none would say that
+you were not protected. For we are men as bold as they."
+
+The king saw that the M'gimi party was in the minority. Moreover, he had
+little sympathy with the warrior caste, for his beginnings were basely
+rooted in the soil, and two of his sons had no more than scraped into
+the M'gimi.
+
+"This thing shall be done," said the king, and the roar of approval
+which swept up the little hillock on which he sat was his reward.
+
+Sanders, learning something of these doings, had come in haste, moving
+across the Lower Akasava by a short cut, risking the chagrin of certain
+chiefs and friends who would be shocked and mortified by his apparent
+lack of courtesy in missing the ceremonious call which was their due.
+
+But his business was very urgent, otherwise he would not have travelled
+by Nobolama--The-River-that-comes-and-goes.
+
+He was fortunate in that he found deep water for the _Wiggle_ as far as
+the edge of this pleasant land. A two days' trek through the forest
+brought him to the great city of Morjaba. In all the Territories there
+was no such city as this, for it stretched for miles on either hand, and
+indeed was one of the most densely populated towns within a radius of
+five hundred miles.
+
+S'kobi came waddling to meet his governor with maize, plucked in haste
+from the gardens he passed, and salt, grabbed at the first news of
+Sanders's arrival, in his big hands. These he extended as he puffed to
+where Sanders sat at the edge of the city.
+
+"Lord," he wheezed, "none came with news of this great honour, or my
+young men would have met you, and my maidens would have danced the road
+flat with their feet. Take!"
+
+Sanders extended both palms and received the tribute of salt and corn,
+and solemnly handed the crushed mess to his orderly.
+
+"O S'kobi," he said, "I came swiftly to make a secret palaver with you,
+and my time is short."
+
+"Lord, I am your man," said S'kobi, and signalled his councillors and
+elder men to a distance.
+
+Sanders was in some difficulty to find a beginning.
+
+"You know, S'kobi, that I love your people as my children," he said,
+"for they are good folk who are faithful to government and do ill to
+none."
+
+"Wa!" said S'kobi.
+
+"Also you know that spearmen and warriors I do not love, for spears are
+war and warriors are great lovers of fighting."
+
+"Lord, you speak the truth," said the other, nodding, "therefore in this
+land I will have made a law that there shall be no spears, save those
+which sleep in the shadow of my hut. Now well I know why you have come
+to make this palaver, for you have heard with your beautiful long ears
+that I have sent away my fighting regiments."
+
+Sanders nodded.
+
+"You speak truly, my friend," he said, and S'kobi beamed.
+
+"Six times a thousand spears I had--and, lord, spears grow no corn.
+Rather are they terrible eaters. And now I have sent them to their
+villages, and at the next moon they should have burnt their fine
+war-knives, but for a certain happening. We folk of Morjaba have no
+enemies, and we do good to all. Moreover, lord, as you know, we have
+amongst us many folk of the Isisi, of the Akasava and the N'gombi, also
+men from the Great King's land beyond the High Rocks, and the little
+folk from The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp. Therefore, who shall attack us
+since we have kinsmen of all amongst us?"
+
+Sanders regarded the jovial king with a sad little smile.
+
+"Have I done well by all men?" he asked quietly. "Have I not governed
+the land so that punishment comes swiftly to those who break the law?
+Yet, S'kobi, do not the Akasava and the Isisi, the N'gombi and the Lower
+River folk take their spears against me? Now I tell you this which I
+have discovered. In all beasts great and little there are mothers who
+have young ones and fathers who fight that none shall harass the
+mother."
+
+"Lord, this is the way of life," said S'kobi.
+
+"It is the way of the Bigger Life," said Sanders, "and greatly the way
+of man-life. For the women bring children to the land and the men sit
+with their spears ready to fight all who would injure their women. And
+so long as life lasts, S'kobi, the women will bear and the men will
+guard; it is the way of Nature, and you shall not take from men the
+desire for slaughter until you have dried from the hearts of women the
+yearning for children."
+
+"Lord," said S'kobi, a fat man and easily puzzled, "what shall be the
+answer to this strange riddle you set me?"
+
+"Only this," said Sanders rising, "I wish peace in this land, but there
+can be no peace between the leopard who has teeth and claws and the
+rabbit who has neither tooth nor claw. Does the leopard fight the lion
+or the lion the leopard? They live in peace, for each is terrible in
+his way, and each fears the other. I tell you this, that you live in
+love with your neighbours not because of your kindness, but because of
+your spears. Call them back to your city, S'kobi."
+
+The chief's large face wrinkled in a frown.
+
+"Lord," he said, "that cannot be, for these men have marched away from
+my country to find a people who will feed them, for they are too proud
+to dig the ground."
+
+"Oh, damn!" said Sanders in despair, and went back the way he came,
+feeling singularly helpless.
+
+The Odyssey of the discarded army of the Morjaba has yet to be written.
+Paradoxically enough, its primary mission was a peaceful one, and when
+it found first the frontiers of the Akasava and then the river borders
+of the Isisi closed against it, it turned to the north in an endeavour to
+find service under the Great King, beyond the mountains. Here it was
+repulsed and its pacific intentions doubted. The M'gimi formed a camp a
+day's march from the Ochori border, and were on the thin line which
+separates unemployment from anarchy when Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori,
+who had learnt of their presence, came upon the scene.
+
+Bosambo was a born politician. He had the sense of opportunity and that
+strange haze of hopeful but indefinite purpose which is the foundation
+of the successful poet and statesman, but which, when unsuccessfully
+developed, is described as "temperament."
+
+Bones, paying a business call upon the Ochori, found a new township
+grown up on the forest side of the city. He also discovered evidence of
+discontent in Bosambo's harassed people, who had been called upon to
+provide fish and meal for the greater part of six thousand men who were
+too proud to work.
+
+"Master," said Bosambo, "I have often desired such an army as this, for
+my Ochori fighters are few. Now, lord, with these men I can hold the
+Upper River for your King, and Sandi and none dare speak against him.
+Thus would N'poloyani, who is your good friend, have done."
+
+"But who shall feed these men, Bosambo?" demanded Bones hastily.
+
+"All things are with God," replied Bosambo piously.
+
+Bones collected all the available information upon the matter and took
+it back to headquarters.
+
+"H'm," said Sanders when he had concluded his recital, "if it were any
+other man but Bosambo ... you would require another battalion,
+Hamilton."
+
+"But what has Bosambo done?" asked Patricia Hamilton, admitted to the
+council.
+
+"He is being Napoleonic," said Sanders, with a glance at the youthful
+authority on military history, and Bones squirmed and made strange
+noises. "We will see how it works out. How on earth is he going to feed
+them, Bones?"
+
+"Exactly the question I asked, sir an' Excellency," said Bones in
+triumph. "'Why, you silly old ass----'"
+
+"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the startled Sanders.
+
+"That is what I said to Bosambo, sir," explained Bones hastily. "'Why,
+you silly old ass,' I said, 'how are you going to grub 'em?' 'Lord
+Bones,' said Bosambo, 'that's the jolly old problem that I'm workin'
+out.'"
+
+How Bosambo worked out his problem may be gathered.
+
+"There is some talk of an Akasava rising," said Sanders at breakfast one
+morning. "I don't know why this should be, for my information is that
+the Akasava folk are fairly placid."
+
+"Where does the news come from, sir?" asked Hamilton.
+
+"From the Isisi king--he's in a devil of a funk, and has begged Bosambo
+to send him help."
+
+That help was forthcoming in the shape of Bosambo's new army, which
+arrived on the outskirts of the Isisi city and sat in idleness for a
+month, at the end of which time the people of the Isisi represented to
+their king that they would, on the whole, prefer war to a peace which
+put them on half rations in order that six thousand proud warriors might
+live on the fat of the land.
+
+The M'gimi warriors marched back to the Ochori, each man carrying a
+month's supply of maize and salt, wrung from the resentful peasants of
+the Isisi.
+
+Three weeks after, Bosambo sent an envoy to the King of the Akasava.
+
+"Let no man know this, Gubara, lest it come to the ears of Sandi, and
+you, who are very innocent, be wrongly blamed," said the envoy solemnly.
+"Thus says Bosambo: It has come to my ears that the N'gombi are secretly
+arming and will very soon send a forest of spears against the Akasava.
+Say this to Gubara, that because my stomach is filled with sorrow I will
+help him. Because I am very powerful, because of my friendship with
+Bonesi and his cousin, N'poloyani, who is also married to Bonesi's aunt,
+I have a great army which I will send to the Akasava, and when the
+N'gombi hear of this they will send away their spears and there will be
+peace."
+
+The Akasava chief, a nervous man with the memory of all the discomforts
+which follow tribal wars, eagerly assented. For two months Bosambo's
+army sat down like a cloud of locusts and ate the Akasava to a condition
+bordering upon famine.
+
+At the end of that time they marched to the N'gombi country, news having
+been brought by Bosambo's messengers that the Great King was crossing
+the western mountains with a terrible army to seize the N'gombi forests.
+How long this novel method of provisioning his army might have continued
+may only be guessed, for in the midst of Bosambo's plans for maintaining
+an army at the expense of his neighbours there was a great happening in
+the Morjaba country.
+
+S'kobi, the fat chief, had watched the departure of his warriors with
+something like relief. He was gratified, moreover (native-like), by the
+fact that he had confounded Sanders. But when the Commissioner had gone
+and S'kobi remembered all that he had said, a great doubt settled like a
+pall upon his mind. For three days he sat, a dejected figure, on the
+high carved stool of state before his house, and at the end of that time
+he summoned S'gono, the M'joro.
+
+"S'gono," said he, "I am troubled in my stomach because of certain
+things which our lord Sandi has said."
+
+Thereupon he told the plebeian councillor much of what Sanders had said.
+
+"And now my M'gimi are with Bosambo of the Ochori, and he sells them to
+this people and that for so much treasure and food."
+
+"Lord," said S'gono, "is my word nothing? Did I not say that I would
+raise spears more wonderful than the M'gimi? Give me leave, King, and
+you shall find an army that shall grow in a night. I, S'gono, son of
+Mocharlabili Yoka, say this!"
+
+So messengers went forth to all the villages of the Morjaba calling the
+young men to the king's hut, and on the third week there stood on a
+plateau beneath the king's palaver house a most wonderful host.
+
+"Let them march across the plain and make the Dance of Killing," said
+the satisfied king, and S'gono hesitated.
+
+"Lord King," he pleaded, "these are new soldiers, and they are not yet
+wise in the ways of warriors. Also they will not take the chiefs I gave
+them, but have chosen their own, so that each company have two leaders
+who say evil things of one another."
+
+S'kobi opened his round eyes.
+
+"The M'gimi did not do this," he said dubiously, "for when their
+captains spoke they leapt first with one leg and then with the other,
+which was beautiful to see and very terrifying to our enemies."
+
+"Lord," begged the agitated S'gono, "give me the space of a moon and
+they shall leap with both legs and dance in a most curious manner."
+
+A spy retailed this promise to a certain giant chief of the Great King
+who was sitting on the Morjaba slopes of the mountains with four
+thousand spears, awaiting a favourable moment to ford the river which
+separated him from the rich lands of the northern Morjaba.
+
+This giant heard the tidings with interest.
+
+"Soon they shall leap without heads," he said, "for without the
+M'gimi they are little children. For twenty seasons we have waited,
+and now comes our fine night. Go you, B'furo, to the Chief of
+The-Folk-beyond-the-Swamp and tell him that when he sees three fires on
+this mountain he shall attack across the swamp by the road which he
+knows."
+
+It was a well-planned campaign which the Great King's generals and the
+Chief of The-People-beyond-the-Marsh had organized. With the passing of
+the warrior caste the enemies of the Morjaba had moved swiftly. The path
+across the swamp had been known for years, but the M'gimi had had one of
+their camps so situated that no enemy could debouch across, and had so
+ordered their dispositions that the northern river boundary was
+automatically safeguarded.
+
+Now S'gono was a man of the fields, a grower and seller of maize and a
+breeder of goats. And he had planned his new army as he would plan a new
+garden, on the basis that the nearer the army was to the capital, the
+easier it was to maintain. In consequence the river-ford was unguarded,
+and there were two thousand spears across the marshes before a scared
+minister of war apprehended any danger.
+
+He flung his new troops against the Great King's chief captain in a
+desperate attempt to hold back the principal invader. At the same time,
+more by luck than good generalship, he pushed the evil people of the
+marsh back to their native element.
+
+For two days the Morjaba fought desperately if unskilfully against the
+seasoned troops of the Great King, while messengers hurried east and
+south, seeking help.
+
+Bosambo's intelligence department may have shown remarkable prescience
+in unearthing the plot against the peace and security of the Morjaba, or
+it may have been (and this is Sanders's theory) that Bosambo was on his
+way to the Morjaba with a cock and bull story of imminent danger. He was
+on the frontier when the king's messenger came, and Bosambo returned
+with the courier to treat in person.
+
+"Five thousand loads of corn I will give you, Bosambo," said the king,
+"also a hundred bags of salt. Also two hundred women who shall be slaves
+in your house."
+
+There was some bargaining, for Bosambo had no need of slaves, but
+urgently wanted goats. In the end he brought up his hirelings, and the
+people of the Morjaba city literally fell on the necks of the returned
+M'gimi.
+
+The enemy had forced the northern defences and were half-way to the city
+when the M'gimi fell upon their flank.
+
+The giant chief of the Great King's army saw the ordered ranks of the
+old army driving in his flank, and sent for his own captain.
+
+"Go swiftly to our lord, the King, and say that I am a dead man."
+
+He spoke no more than the truth, for he fell at the hand of Bosambo, who
+made a mental resolve to increase his demand on the herds of S'kobi in
+consequence.
+
+For the greater part of a month Bosambo was a welcome visitor, and at
+the end of that time he made his preparations to depart.
+
+Carriers and herdsmen drove or portered his reward back to the Ochori
+country, marching one day ahead of the main body.
+
+The M'gimi were summoned for the march at dawn, but at dawn Bosambo
+found himself alone on the plateau, save for the few Ochori headmen who
+had accompanied him on his journey.
+
+"Lord," said S'kobi, "my fine soldiers do not go with you, for I have
+seen how wise is Sandi who is my father and my mother."
+
+Bosambo choked, and as was usual in moments of intense emotion, found
+refuge in English.
+
+"Dam' nigger!" he said wrathfully, "I bring um army, I feed um, I keep
+um proper--you pinch um! Black t'ief! Pig! You bad feller! I speak you
+bad for N'poloyani--him fine feller."
+
+"Lord," said the uncomprehending king, "I see that you are like Sandi
+for you speak his tongue. He also said 'Dam' very loudly. I think it is
+the word white folk say when they are happy."
+
+Bosambo met Bones hurrying to the scene of the fighting, and told his
+tale.
+
+"Lord," said he in conclusion, "what was I to do, for you told nothing
+of the ways of N'poloyani when his army was stolen from him. Tell me
+now, Tibbetti, what this man would have done."
+
+But Bones shook his head severely.
+
+"This I cannot tell you, Bosambo," he said, "for if I do you will tell
+others, and my lord N'poloyani will never forgive me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WATERS OF MADNESS
+
+
+Unexpected things happen in the Territories which Mr. Commissioner
+Sanders rules. As for example: Bones had gone down to the beach to "take
+the mail." This usually meant no more than receiving a mail-bag wildly
+flung from a dancing surf-boat. On this occasion Bones was surprised to
+discover that the boat had beached and had landed, not only the mail,
+but a stranger with his baggage.
+
+He was a clean-shaven, plump man, in spotless white, and he greeted
+Bones with a friendly nod. "Morning!" he said. "I've got your mail."
+
+Bones extended his hand and took the bag without evidence of any
+particular enthusiasm.
+
+"Sanders about?" asked the stranger.
+
+"Mr. Sanders is in residence, sir," said Bones, ponderously polite.
+
+The other laughed. "Show the way," he said briskly.
+
+Bones looked at the new-comer from the ventilator of his pith helmet to
+the soles of his pipe-clayed shoes. "Excuse me, dear old sir," he said,
+"have I the honour of addressin' the Secretary of State for War?"
+
+"No," answered the other in surprise. "What made you think that?"
+
+"Because," said Bones, with rising wrath, "he's the only fellow that
+needn't say 'please' to me."
+
+The man roared with laughter. "Sorry," he said. "_Please_ show me the
+way."
+
+"Follow me, sir," said Bones.
+
+Sanders was not "in residence," being, in fact, inspecting some
+recent--and native--repairs to the boilers of the _Zaire_.
+
+The stranger drew up a chair on the stoep without invitation and seated
+himself. He looked around. Patricia Hamilton was at the far end of the
+stoep, reading a book. She had glanced up just long enough to note and
+wonder at the new arrival. "Deuced pretty girl that," said the stranger,
+lighting a cigar.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Bones.
+
+"I say that is a deuced pretty girl," said the stranger.
+
+"And you're a deuced brute, dear sir," said Bones, "but hitherto I have
+not commented on the fact."
+
+The man looked up quickly. "What are you here," he asked--"a clerk or
+something?"
+
+Bones did not so much as flush. "Oh, no," he said sweetly. "I am an
+officer of Houssas--rank, lieutenant. My task is to tame the uncivilized
+beast an' entertain the civilized pig with a selection of music. Would
+you like to hear our gramophone?"
+
+The new-comer frowned. What brilliant effort of persiflage was to follow
+will never be known, for at that moment came Sanders.
+
+The stranger rose and produced a pocket-book, from which he extracted a
+card and a letter. "Good morning, Commissioner!" he said. "My name's
+Corklan--P. T. Corklan, of Corklan, Besset and Lyons."
+
+"Indeed," said Sanders.
+
+"I've got a letter for you," said the man.
+
+Sanders took the note, opened it, and read. It bore the neat signature
+of an Under-Secretary of State and the embossed heading of the
+Extra-Territorial Office, and it commended Mr. P. T. Corklan to Mr.
+Commissioner Sanders, and requested him to let Mr. Corklan pass without
+let or hindrance through the Territories, and to render him every
+assistance "compatible with exigencies of the Service" in his "inquiries
+into sugar production from the sweet potato."
+
+"You should have taken this to the Administrator," said Sanders, "and it
+should bear his signature."
+
+"There's the letter," said the man shortly. "If that's not enough, and
+the signature of the Secretary of State isn't sufficient, I'm going
+straight back to England and tell him so."
+
+"You may go to the devil and tell him so," said Sanders calmly; "but
+you do not pass into these Territories until I have received telegraphic
+authority from my chief. Bones, take this man to your hut, and let your
+people do what they can for him." And he turned and walked into the
+house.
+
+"You shall hear about this," said Mr. Corklan, picking up his baggage.
+
+"This way, dear old pilgrim," said Bones.
+
+"Who's going to carry my bag?"
+
+"Your name escapes me," said Bones, "but, if you'll glance at your
+visitin' card, you will find the name of the porter legibly inscribed."
+
+Sanders compressed the circumstances into a hundred-word telegram worded
+in his own economical style.
+
+It happened that the Administrator was away on a shooting trip, and it
+was his cautious secretary who replied--
+
+"Administration to Sanders.--Duplicate authority here. Let Corklan
+proceed at own risk. Warn him dangers."
+
+"You had better go along and tell him," said Sanders. "He can leave at
+once, and the sooner the better."
+
+Bones delivered the message. The man was sitting on his host's bed, and
+the floor was covered with cigar ash. Worst abomination of all, was a
+large bottle of whisky, which he had produced from one of his bags, and
+a reeking glass, which he had produced from Bones's sideboard.
+
+"So I can go to-night, can I?" said Mr. Corklan. "That's all right. Now,
+what about conveyance, hey?"
+
+Bones had now reached the stage where he had ceased to be annoyed, and
+when he found some interest in the situation. "What sort of conveyance
+would you like, sir?" he asked curiously.
+
+(If you can imagine him pausing half a bar before every "sir," you may
+value its emphasis.)
+
+"Isn't there a steamer I can have?" demanded the man. "Hasn't Sanders
+got a Government steamer?"
+
+"Pardon my swooning," said Bones, sinking into a chair.
+
+"Well, how am I going to get up?" asked the man.
+
+"Are you a good swimmer?" demanded Bones innocently.
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Corklan, "you aren't a bad fellow. I rather like
+you."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Bones simply.
+
+"I rather like you," repeated Mr. Corklan. "You might give me a little
+help."
+
+"It is very unlikely that I shall," said Bones. "But produce your
+proposition, dear old adventurer."
+
+"That is just what I am," said the other. He bit off the end of another
+cigar and lit it with the glowing butt of the old one. "I have knocked
+about all over the world, and I have done everything. I've now a chance
+of making a fortune. There is a tribe here called the N'gombi. They
+live in a wonderful rubber country, and I am told that they have got all
+the ivory in the world, and stacks of rubber hidden away."
+
+Now, it is a fact--and Bones was surprised to hear it related by the
+stranger--that the N'gombi are great misers and hoarders of elephant
+tusks. For hundreds of years they have traded ivory and rubber, and
+every village has its secret storehouse. The Government had tried for
+years to wheedle the N'gombi into depositing their wealth in some State
+store, for riches mean war sooner or later. They lived in great
+forests--the word N'gombi means "interior"--in lands full of elephants
+and rich in rubber trees.
+
+"You are a regular information bureau," said Bones admiringly. "But what
+has this to do with your inquiry into the origin of the candy tree?"
+
+The man smoked in silence for awhile, then he pulled from his pocket a
+big map. Again Bones was surprised, because the map he produced was the
+official map of the Territories. He traced the river with his fat
+forefinger.
+
+"Here is the N'gombi country from the east bank of the Isisi, and this
+is all forest, and a rubber tree to every ten square yards."
+
+"I haven't counted them," said Bones, "but I'll take your word."
+
+"Now, what does this mean?" Mr. Corklan indicated a twisting line of
+dots and dashes which began at the junction of the Isisi River and the
+Great River, and wound tortuously over five hundred miles of country
+until it struck the Sigi River, which runs through Spanish territory.
+"What is that?" he asked.
+
+"That, or those," said Bones, "are the footprints of the mighty swoozlum
+bird that barks with its eyes an' lives on buttered toast an' hardware."
+
+"I will tell you what I know it is," said the man, looking up and
+looking Bones straight in the eye--"it is one of those secret rivers you
+are always finding in these 'wet' countries. The natives tell you about
+'em, but you never find 'em. They are rivers that only exist about once
+in a blue moon, when the river is very high and the rains are very
+heavy. Now, down in the Spanish territory"--he touched Bones's knee with
+great emphasis--"they tell me that their end of the secret river is in
+flood."
+
+"They will tell you anything in the Spanish territory," said Bones
+pleasantly. "They'd tell you your jolly old fortune if you'd cross their
+palms with silver."
+
+"What about your end?" asked the man, ignoring the scepticism of his
+host.
+
+"Our end?" said Bones. "Well, you will find out for yourself. I'd hate
+to disappoint you."
+
+"Now, how am I going up?" asked the man after a pause.
+
+"You can hire a canoe, and live on the land, unless you have brought
+stores."
+
+The man chuckled. "I've brought no stores. Here, I will show you
+something," he said. "You are a very good fellow." He opened his bag and
+took out a tight packet which looked like thin skins. There must have
+been two or three hundred of them. "That's my speciality," he said. He
+nipped the string that tied them together, stripped one off, and,
+putting his lips to one end, blew. The skin swelled up like a toy
+balloon. "Do you know what that is?"
+
+"No, I cannot say I do," said Bones.
+
+"You have heard of Soemmering's process?"
+
+Bones shook his head.
+
+"Do you know what decimal 1986 signifies?"
+
+"You've got me guessing, my lad," said Bones admiringly.
+
+The other chuckled, threw the skins into his bag, and closed it with a
+snap. "That's my little joke," he said. "All my friends tell me it will
+be the death of me one of these days. I like to puzzle people"--he
+smiled amiably and triumphantly in Bones's face--"I like to tell them
+the truth in such a way they don't understand it. If they understood
+it--Heavens, there'd be the devil to pay!"
+
+"You are an ingenious fellow," said Bones, "but I don't like your face.
+You will forgive my frankness, dear old friend."
+
+"Faces aren't fortunes," said the other complacently, "and I am going
+out of this country with money sticking to me."
+
+"I'm sorry for you," said Bones, shaking his head; "I hate to see
+fellows with illusions."
+
+He reported all that occurred to the Commissioner, and Sanders was a
+little worried.
+
+"I wish I knew what his game is," he said; "I'd stop him like a shot,
+but I can't very well in the face of the Administrator's wire. Anyway,
+he will get nothing out of the N'gombi. I've tried every method to make
+the beggars bank their surpluses, and I have failed."
+
+"He has got to come back this way, at any rate," said Hamilton, "and I
+cannot see that he will do much harm."
+
+"What is the rest of his baggage like?"
+
+"He has a case of things that look like concave copper plates, sir,"
+said Bones, "very thin copper, but copper. Then he has two or three
+copper pipes, and that is about his outfit."
+
+Mr. Corklan was evidently no stranger to the coast, and Bones, who
+watched the man's canoe being loaded that afternoon, and heard his
+fluent observations on the slackness of his paddlers, realized that his
+acquaintance with Central Africa was an extensive one. He cursed in
+Swahili and Portuguese, and his language was forcible and impolite.
+"Well," he said at last, "I'll be getting along. I'll make a fishing
+village for the night, and I ought to reach my destination in a week. I
+shan't be seeing you again, so I'll say good-bye."
+
+"How do you suppose you're going to get out of the country?" asked Bones
+curiously.
+
+Mr. Corklan laughed. "So long!" he said.
+
+"One moment, my dashin' old explorer," said Bones. "A little
+formality--I want to see your trunks opened."
+
+A look of suspicion dawned on the man's face. "What for?"
+
+"A little formality, my jolly old hero," said Bones.
+
+"Why didn't you say so before?" growled the man, and had his two trunks
+landed. "I suppose you know you're exceeding your duty?"
+
+"I didn't know--thanks for tellin' me," said Bones. "The fact is, sir
+an' fellow-man, I'm the Custom House officer."
+
+The man opened his bags, and Bones explored. He found three bottles of
+whisky, and these he extracted.
+
+"What's the idea?" asked Mr. Corklan.
+
+Bones answered him by breaking the bottles on a near-by stone.
+
+"Here, what the dickens----"
+
+"Wine is a mocker," said Bones, "strong drink is ragin'. This is what is
+termed in the land of Hope an' Glory a prohibition State, an' I'm
+entitled to fine you five hundred of the brightest an' best for
+attemptin' to smuggle intoxicants into our innocent country."
+
+Bones expected an outburst; instead, his speech evoked no more than a
+snigger.
+
+"You're funny," said the man.
+
+"My friends tell me so," admitted Bones. "But there's nothin' funny
+about drink. Acquainted as you are with the peculiar workin's of the
+native psychology, dear sir, you will understand the primitive cravin'
+of the untutored mind for the enemy that we put in our mouths to steal
+away our silly old brains. I wish you 'bon voyage.'"
+
+"So long," said Mr. Corklan.
+
+Bones went back to the Residency and made his report, and there, for the
+time being, the matter ended. It was not unusual for wandering
+scientists, manufacturers, and representatives of shipping companies to
+arrive armed with letters of introduction or command, and to be
+dispatched into the interior. The visits, happily, were few and far
+between. On this occasion Sanders, being uneasy, sent one of his spies
+to follow the adventurer, with orders to report any extraordinary
+happening--a necessary step to take, for the N'gombi, and especially the
+Inner N'gombi, are a secretive people, and news from local sources is
+hard to come by.
+
+"I shall never be surprised to learn that a war has been going on in the
+N'gombi for two months without our hearing a word about it."
+
+"If they fight amongst themselves--yes," said Captain Hamilton; "if they
+fight outsiders, there will be plenty of bleats. Why not send Bones to
+overlook his sugar experiments," he added.
+
+"Let's talk about something pleasant," said Bones hastily.
+
+It was exactly three months later when he actually made the trip.
+
+"Take the _Zaire_ up to the bend of the Isisi," said Sanders one
+morning, at breakfast, "and find out what Ali Kano is doing--the lazy
+beggar should have reported."
+
+"Any news from the N'gombi?" asked Hamilton.
+
+"Only roundabout stories of their industry. Apparently the sugar
+merchant is making big experiments. He has set half the people digging
+roots for him. Be ready to sail at dawn."
+
+"Will it be a dangerous trip?" asked the girl.
+
+"No. Why?" smiled Sanders.
+
+"Because I'd like to go. Oh, please, don't look so glum! Bones is
+awfully good to me."
+
+"Better than a jolly old brother," murmured Bones.
+
+"H'm!" Sanders shook his head, and she appealed to her brother.
+
+"Please!"
+
+"I wouldn't mind your going," said Hamilton, "if only to look after
+Bones."
+
+"S-sh!" said Bones reproachfully.
+
+"If you're keen on it, I don't see why you shouldn't--if you had a
+chaperon."
+
+"A chaperon!" sneered Bones. "Great Heavens! Do, old skipper, pull
+yourself together. Open the jolly old window and give him air. Feelin'
+better, sir?"
+
+"A chaperon! How absurd!" cried the girl indignantly. "I'm old enough to
+be Bones's mother! I'm nearly twenty--well, I'm older than Bones, and
+I'm ever so much more capable of looking after myself."
+
+The end of it was that she went, with her Kano maid and with the wife of
+Abiboo to cook for her. And in two days they came to the bend of the
+river, and Bones pursued his inquiries for the missing spy, but without
+success.
+
+"But this I tell you, lord," said the little chief who acted as
+Sanders's agent, "that there are strange things happening in the N'gombi
+country, for all the people have gone mad, and are digging up their
+teeth (tusks) and bringing them to a white man."
+
+"This shall go to Sandi," said Bones, realizing the importance of the
+news; and that same evening he turned the bow of the _Zaire_ down
+stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus said Wafa, the half-breed, for he was neither foreign Arab nor
+native N'gombi, yet combined the cunning of both--
+
+"Soon we shall see the puc-a-puc of Government turn from the
+crookedness of the river, and I will go out and speak to our lord
+Tibbetti, who is a very simple man, and like a child."
+
+"O Wafa," said one of the group of armed men which stood shivering on
+the beach in the cold hours of dawn, "may this be a good palaver! As for
+me, my stomach is filled with fearfulness. Let us all drink this magic
+water, for it gives us men courage."
+
+"That you shall do when you have carried out all our master's works,"
+said Wafa, and added with confidence: "Have no fear, for soon you shall
+see great wonders."
+
+They heard the deep boom of the _Zaire's_ siren signalling a solitary
+and venturesome fisherman to quit the narrow fair-way, and presently she
+came round the bend of the river, a dazzling white craft, showering
+sparks from her two slender smoke-stacks and leaving behind her twin
+cornucopias of grey smoke.
+
+Wafa stepped into a canoe, and, seeing that the others were preparing to
+follow him, he struck out swiftly, man[oe]uvring his ironwood boat to
+the very waters from whence a scared fisherman was frantically paddling.
+
+"Go not there, foreigner," wailed the Isisi Stabber-of-Waters, "for it
+is our lord Sandi, and his puc-a-puc has bellowed terribly."
+
+"Die you!" roared Wafa. "On the river bottom your body, son of a fish
+and father of snakes!"
+
+"O foreign frog!" came the shrill retort. "O poor man with two men's
+wives! O goatless----"
+
+Wafa was too intent upon his business to heed the rest. He struck the
+water strongly with his broad paddles, and reached the centre of the
+channel.
+
+Bones of the Houssas put up his hand and jerked the rope of the siren.
+
+_Whoo-o-o--woo-o-op!_
+
+"Bless his silly old head," said Bones fretfully, "the dashed fellow
+will be run down!"
+
+The girl was dusting Bones's cabin, and looked round. "What is it?" she
+asked.
+
+Bones made no reply. He gripped the telegraph handle and rung the
+engines astern as Yoka, the steersman, spun the wheel.
+
+Bump! Bump! Bumpity bump!
+
+The steamer slowed and stopped, and the girl came out to the bridge in
+alarm. The _Zaire_ had struck a sandbank, and was stranded high, if not
+dry.
+
+"Bring that man on board," said the wrathful Bones. And they hauled to
+his presence Wafa, who was neither Arab nor N'gombi, but combined the
+vices of both.
+
+"O man," said Bones, glaring at the offender through his eyeglass, "what
+evil ju-ju sent you to stop my fine ship?" He spoke in the Isisi
+dialect, and was surprised to be answered in coast Arabic.
+
+"Lord," said the man, unmoved by the wrath of his overlord, "I come to
+make a great palaver concerning spirits and devils. Lord, I have found a
+great magic."
+
+Bones grinned, for he had that sense of humour which rises superior to
+all other emotions. "Then you shall try your magic, my man, and lift
+this ship to deep water."
+
+Wafa was not at all embarrassed. "Lord, this is a greater magic, for it
+concerns men, and brings to life the dead. For, lord, in this forest is
+a wonderful tree. Behold!"
+
+He took from his loose-rolled waistband a piece of wood. Bones took it
+in his hand. It was the size of a corn cob, and had been newly cut, so
+that the wood was moist with sap. Bones smelt it. There was a faint
+odour of resin and camphor. Patricia Hamilton smiled. It was so like
+Bones to be led astray by side issues.
+
+"Where is the wonder, man, that you should drive my ship upon a
+sandbank! And who are these?" Bones pointed to six canoes, filled with
+men, approaching the _Zaire_. The man did not answer, but, taking the
+wood from Bones's hand, pulled a knife from his belt and whittled a
+shaving.
+
+"Here, lord," he said, "is my fine magic. With this wood I can do many
+miracles, such as making sick men strong and the strong weak."
+
+Bones heard the canoes bump against the side of the boat, but his mind
+was occupied with curiosity.
+
+"Thus do I make my magic, Tibbetti," droned Wafa.
+
+He held the knife by the haft in the right hand, and the chip of wood in
+his left. The point of the knife was towards the white man's heart.
+
+"Bones!" screamed the girl.
+
+Bones jumped aside and struck out as the man lunged. His nobbly fist
+caught Wafa under the jaw, and the man stumbled and fell. At the same
+instant there was a yell from the lower deck, the sound of scuffling,
+and a shot.
+
+Bones jumped for the girl, thrust her into the cabin, sliding the steel
+door behind him. His two revolvers hung at the head of his bunk, and he
+slipped them out, gave a glance to see whether they were loaded, and
+pushed the door.
+
+"Shut the door after me," he breathed.
+
+The bridge deck was deserted, and Bones raced down the ladder to the
+iron deck. Two Houssas and half a dozen natives lay dead or dying. The
+remainder of the soldiers were fighting desperately with whatever
+weapons they found to their hands--for, with characteristic carefulness,
+they had laid their rifles away in oil, lest the river air rust
+them--and, save for the sentry, who used a rifle common to all, they
+were unarmed.
+
+"O dogs!" roared Bones.
+
+The invaders turned and faced the long-barrelled Webleys, and the fight
+was finished. Later, Wafa came to the bridge with bright steel manacles
+on his wrist. His companions in the mad adventure sat on the iron deck
+below, roped leg to leg, and listened with philosophic calm as the
+Houssa sentry drew lurid pictures of the fate which awaited them.
+
+Bones sat in his deep chair, and the prisoner squatted before him. "You
+shall tell my lord Sandi why you did this wickedness," he said, "also,
+Wafa, what evil thought was in your mind."
+
+"Lord," said Wafa cheerfully, "what good comes to me if I speak?"
+Something about the man's demeanour struck Bones as strange, and he rose
+and went close to him.
+
+"I see," he said, with a tightened lip. "The palaver is finished."
+
+They led the man away, and the girl, who had been a spectator, asked
+anxiously: "What is wrong, Bones?"
+
+But the young man shook his head. "The breaking of all that Sanders has
+worked for," he said bitterly, and the very absence of levity in one
+whose heart was so young and gay struck a colder chill to the girl's
+heart than the yells of the warring N'gombi. For Sanders had a big place
+in Patricia Hamilton's life. In an hour the _Zaire_ was refloated, and
+was going at full speed down stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sanders held his court in the thatched palaver house between the Houssa
+guard-room and the little stockade prison at the river's edge--a prison
+hidden amidst the flowering shrubs and acacia trees.
+
+Wafa was the first to be examined. "Lord," he said, without
+embarrassment, "I tell you this--that I will not speak of the great
+wonders which lay in my heart unless you give me a book[6] that I shall
+go free."
+
+[Footnote 6: A written promise.]
+
+Sanders smiled unpleasantly. "By the Prophet, I say what is true," he
+began confidentially; and Wafa winced at the oath, for he knew that
+truth was coming, and truth of a disturbing character. "In this land I
+govern millions of men," said Sanders, speaking deliberately, "I and two
+white lords. I govern by fear, Wafa, because there is no love in simple
+native men, save a love for their own and their bellies."
+
+"Lord, you speak truth," said Wafa, the superior Arab of him responding
+to the confidence.
+
+"Now, if you make to kill the lord Tibbetti," Sanders went on, "and do
+your wickedness for secret reasons, must I not discover what is that
+secret, lest it mean that I lose my hold upon the lands I govern?"
+
+"Lord, that is also true," said Wafa.
+
+"For what is one life more or less," asked Sanders, "a suffering smaller
+or greater by the side of my millions and their good?"
+
+"Lord, you are Suliman," said Wafa eagerly. "Therefore, if you let me
+go, who shall be the worse for it?"
+
+Again Sanders smiled, that grim parting of lip to show his white teeth.
+"Yet you may lie, and, if I let you go, I have neither the truth nor
+your body. No, Wafa, you shall speak." He rose up from his chair.
+"To-day you shall go to the Village of Irons," he said; "to-morrow I
+will come to you, and you shall answer my questions. And, if you will
+not speak, I shall light a little fire on your chest, and that fire
+shall not go out except when the breath goes from your body. This
+palaver is finished."
+
+So they took Wafa away to the Village of Irons, where the evil men of
+the Territories worked with chains about their ankles for their many
+sins, and in the morning came Sanders.
+
+"Speak, man," he said.
+
+Wafa stared with an effort of defiance, but his face was twitching, for
+he saw the soldiers driving pegs into the ground, preparatory to staking
+him out. "I will speak the truth," he said.
+
+So they took him into a hut, and there Sanders sat with him alone for
+half an hour; and when the Commissioner came out, his face was drawn and
+grey. He beckoned to Hamilton, who came forward and saluted. "We will
+get back to headquarters," he said shortly, and they arrived two hours
+later.
+
+Sanders sat in the little telegraph office, and the Morse sounder
+rattled and clacked for half an hour. Other sounders were at work
+elsewhere, delicate needles vacillated in cable offices, and an
+Under-Secretary was brought from the House of Commons to the bureau of
+the Prime Minister to answer a question.
+
+At four o'clock in the afternoon came the message Sanders expected:
+"London says permit for Corklan forged. Arrest. Take extremest steps.
+Deal drastically, ruthlessly. Holding in residence three companies
+African Rifles and mountain battery support you. Good luck.
+Administration."
+
+Sanders came out of the office, and Bones met him.
+
+"Men all aboard, sir," he reported.
+
+"We'll go," said Sanders.
+
+He met the girl half-way to the quay. "I know it is something very
+serious," she said quietly; "you have all my thoughts." She put both her
+hands in his, and he took them. Then, without a word, he left her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. P. T. Corklan sat before his new hut in the village of Fimini. In
+that hut--the greatest the N'gombi had ever seen--were stored hundreds
+of packages all well wrapped and sewn in native cloth.
+
+He was not smoking a cigar, because his stock of cigars was running
+short, but he was chewing a toothpick, for these, at a pinch, could be
+improvised. He called to his headman. "Wafa?" he asked.
+
+"Lord, he will come, for he is very cunning," said the headman.
+
+Mr. Corklan grunted. He walked to the edge of the village, where the
+ground sloped down to a strip of vivid green rushes. "Tell me, how long
+will this river be full?" he asked.
+
+"Lord, for a moon."
+
+Corklan nodded. Whilst the secret river ran, there was escape for him,
+for its meandering course would bring him and his rich cargo to Spanish
+territory and deep water.
+
+His headman waited as though he had something to say. "Lord," he said at
+last, "the chief of the N'coro village sends this night ten great teeth
+and a pot."
+
+Corklan nodded. "If we're here, we'll get 'em. I hope we shall be gone."
+
+And then the tragically unexpected happened. A man in white came through
+the trees towards him, and behind was another white man and a platoon of
+native soldiers.
+
+"Trouble," said Corklan to himself, and thought the moment was one which
+called for a cigar.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Sanders!" he said cheerfully.
+
+Sanders eyed him in silence.
+
+"This is an unexpected pleasure," said Corklan.
+
+"Corklan, where is your still?" asked Sanders.
+
+The plump man laughed. "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said,
+"and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit--all proof,
+sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's
+method--in fact, as good as you could get it in England."
+
+Sanders nodded. "I remember now--you're the man that ran the still in
+the Ashanti country, and got away with the concession."
+
+"That's me," said the other complacently. "P. T. Corklan--I never assume
+an alias."
+
+Sanders nodded again. "I came past villages," he said, "where every man
+and almost every woman was drunk. I have seen villages wiped out in
+drunken fights. I have seen a year's hard work ahead of me. You have
+corrupted a province in a very short space of time, and, as far as I can
+judge, you hoped to steal a Government ship and get into neutral
+territory with the prize you have won by your----"
+
+"Enterprise," said Mr. Corklan obligingly. "You'll have to prove
+that--about the ship. I am willing to stand any trial you like. There's
+no law about prohibition--it's one you've made yourself. I brought up
+the still--that's true--brought it up in sections and fitted it. I've
+been distilling spirits--that's true----"
+
+"I also saw a faithful servant of Government, one Ali Kano," said
+Sanders, in a low voice. "He was lying on the bank of this secret river
+of yours with two revolver bullets in him."
+
+"The nigger was spying on me, and I shot him," explained Corklan.
+
+"I understand," said Sanders. And then, after a little pause: "Will you
+be hung or shot?"
+
+The cigar dropped from the man's mouth. "Hey?" he said hoarsely.
+"You--you can't--do that--for making a drop of liquor--for niggers!"
+
+"For murdering a servant of the State," corrected Sanders. "But, if it
+is any consolation to you, I will tell you that I would have killed you,
+anyway."
+
+It took Mr. Corklan an hour to make up his mind, and then he chose
+rifles.
+
+To-day the N'gombi point to a mound near the village of Fimini, which
+they call by a name which means, "The Waters of Madness," and it is
+believed to be haunted by devils.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+EYE TO EYE
+
+
+"Bones," said Captain Hamilton, in despair, "you will never be a
+Napoleon."
+
+"Dear old sir and brother-officer," said Lieutenant Tibbetts, "you are a
+jolly old pessimist."
+
+Bones was by way of being examined in subjects C and D, for promotion to
+captaincy, and Hamilton was the examining officer. By all the rules and
+laws and strict regulations which govern military examinations, Bones
+had not only failed, but he had seriously jeopardized his right to his
+lieutenancy, if every man had his due.
+
+"Now, let me put this," said Hamilton. "Suppose you were in charge of a
+company of men, and you were attacked on three sides, and you had a
+river behind you on the fourth side, and you found things were going
+very hard against you. What would you do?"
+
+"Dear old sir," said Bones thoughtfully, and screwing his face into all
+manner of contortions in his effort to secure the right answer, "I
+should go and wet my heated brow in the purling brook, then I'd take
+counsel with myself."
+
+"You'd lose," said Hamilton, with a groan. "That's the last person in
+the world you should go to for advice, Bones. Suppose," he said, in a
+last desperate effort to awaken a gleam of military intelligence in his
+subordinate's mind, "suppose you were trekking through the forest with a
+hundred rifles, and you found your way barred by a thousand armed men.
+What would you do?"
+
+"Go back," said Bones, "and jolly quick, dear old fellow."
+
+"Go back? What would you go back for?" asked the other, in astonishment.
+
+"To make my will," said Bones firmly, "and to write a few letters to
+dear old friends in the far homeland. I have friends, Ham," he said,
+with dignity, "jolly old people who listen for my footsteps, and to whom
+my voice is music, dear old fellow."
+
+"What other illusions do they suffer from?" asked Hamilton offensively,
+closing his book with a bang. "Well, you will be sorry to learn that I
+shall not recommend you for promotion."
+
+"You don't mean that," said Bones hoarsely.
+
+"I mean that," said Hamilton.
+
+"Well, I thought if I had a pal to examine me, I would go through with
+flying colours."
+
+"Then I am not a pal. You don't suggest," said Hamilton, with ominous
+dignity, "that I would defraud the public by lying as to the qualities
+of a deficient character?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Bones, nodding vigorously, "for my sake and for the
+sake of the child." The child was that small native whom Bones had
+rescued and adopted.
+
+"Not even for the sake of the child," said Hamilton, with an air of
+finality. "Bones, you're ploughed."
+
+Bones did not speak, and Hamilton gathered together the papers, forms,
+and paraphernalia of examination.
+
+He lifted his head suddenly, to discover that Bones was staring at him.
+It was no ordinary stare, but something that was a little uncanny. "What
+the dickens are you looking at?"
+
+Bones did not speak. His round eyes were fixed on his superior in an
+unwinking glare.
+
+"When I said you had failed," said Hamilton kindly, "I meant, of
+course----"
+
+"That I'd passed," muttered Bones excitedly. "Say it, Ham--say it!
+'Bones, congratulations, dear old lad'----"
+
+"I meant," said Hamilton coldly, "that you have another chance next
+month."
+
+The face of Lieutenant Tibbetts twisted into a painful contortion. "It
+didn't work!" he said bitterly, and stalked from the room.
+
+"Rum beggar!" thought Hamilton, and smiled to himself.
+
+"Have you noticed anything strange about Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton
+the next day.
+
+Her brother looked at her over his newspaper. "The strangest thing about
+Bones is Bones," he said, "and that I am compelled to notice every day
+of my life."
+
+She looked up at Sanders, who was idly pacing the stoep of the
+Residency. "Have you, Mr. Sanders?"
+
+Sanders paused. "Beyond the fact that he is rather preoccupied and
+stares at one----"
+
+"That is it," said the girl. "I knew I was right--he stares horribly. He
+has been doing it for a week--just staring. Do you think he is ill?"
+
+"He has been moping in his hut for the past week," said Hamilton
+thoughtfully, "but I was hoping that it meant that he was swotting for
+his exam. But staring--I seem to remember----"
+
+The subject of the discussion made his appearance at the far end of the
+square at that moment, and they watched him. First he walked slowly
+towards the Houssa sentry, who shouldered his arms in salute. Bones
+halted before the soldier and stared at him. Somehow, the watchers on
+the stoep knew that he was staring--there was something so fixed, so
+tense in his attitude. Then, without warning, the sentry's hand passed
+across his body, and the rifle came down to the "present."
+
+"What on earth is he doing?" demanded the outraged Hamilton, for
+sentries do not present arms to subaltern officers.
+
+Bones passed on. He stopped before one of the huts in the married lines,
+and stared at the wife of Sergeant Abiboo. He stared long and earnestly,
+and the woman, giggling uncomfortably, stared back. Then she began to
+dance.
+
+"For Heaven's sake----" gasped Sanders, as Bones passed on.
+
+"Bones!" roared Hamilton.
+
+Bones turned first his head, then his body towards the Residency, and
+made his slow way towards the group.
+
+"What is happening?" asked Hamilton.
+
+The face of Bones was flushed; there was triumph in his eye--triumph
+which his pose of nonchalance could not wholly conceal. "What is
+happening, dear old officer?" he asked innocently, and stared.
+
+"What the dickens are you goggling at?" demanded Hamilton irritably.
+"And please explain why you told the sentry to present arms to you."
+
+"I didn't tell him, dear old sir and superior captain," said Bones. His
+eyes never left Hamilton's; he stared with a fierceness and with an
+intensity that was little short of ferocious.
+
+"Confound you, what are you staring at? Aren't you well?" demanded
+Hamilton wrathfully.
+
+Bones blinked. "Quite well, sir and comrade," he said gravely. "Pardon
+the question--did you feel a curious and unaccountable inclination to
+raise your right hand and salute me?"
+
+"Did I--what?" demanded his dumbfounded superior.
+
+"A sort of itching of the right arm--an almost overpowerin' inclination
+to touch your hat to poor old Bones?"
+
+Hamilton drew a long breath. "I felt an almost overpowering desire to
+lift my foot," he said significantly.
+
+"Look at me again," said Bones calmly. "Fix your eyes on mine an' think
+of nothin'. Now shut your eyes. Now you can't open 'em."
+
+"Of course I can open them," said Hamilton. "Have you been drinking,
+Bones?"
+
+A burst of delighted laughter from the girl checked Bones's indignant
+denial. "I know!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Bones is trying to
+mesmerize you!"
+
+"What?"
+
+The scarlet face of Bones betrayed him.
+
+"Power of the human eye, dear old sir," he said hurriedly. "Some people
+have it--it's a gift. I discovered it the other day after readin' an
+article in _The Scientific Healer_."
+
+"Phew!" Hamilton whistled. "So," he said, with dangerous calm, "all this
+staring and gaping of yours means that, does it? I remember now. When I
+was examining you for promotion the other day, you stared. Trying to
+mesmerize me?"
+
+"Let bygones be bygones, dear old friend," begged Bones.
+
+"And when I asked you to produce the company pay-sheets, which you
+forgot to bring up to date, you stared at me!"
+
+"It's a gift," said Bones feebly.
+
+"Oh, Bones," said the girl slowly, "you stared at me, too, after I
+refused to go picnicking with you on the beach."
+
+"All's fair in love an' war," said Bones vaguely. "It's a wonderful
+gift."
+
+"Have you ever mesmerized anybody?" asked Hamilton curiously, and Bones
+brightened up.
+
+"Rather, dear old sir," he said. "Jolly old Ali, my secretary--goes off
+in a regular trance on the slightest provocation. Fact, dear old Ham."
+
+Hamilton clapped his hands, and his orderly, dozing in the shade of the
+verandah, rose up. "Go, bring Ali Abid," said Hamilton. And when the man
+had gone: "Are you under the illusion that you made the sentry present
+arms to you, and Abiboo's woman dance for you, by the magic of your
+eye?"
+
+"You saw," said the complacent Bones. "It's a wonderful gift, dear old
+Ham. As soon as I read the article, I tried it on Ali. Got him, first
+pop!"
+
+The girl was bubbling with suppressed laughter, and there was a twinkle
+in Sanders's eye. "I recall that you saw me in connection with shooting
+leave in the N'gombi."
+
+"Yes, sir and Excellency," said the miserable Bones.
+
+"And I said that I thought it inadvisable, because of the trouble in the
+bend of the Isisi River."
+
+"Yes, Excellency and sir," agreed Bones dolefully.
+
+"And then you stared."
+
+"Did I, dear old--Did I, sir?"
+
+His embarrassment was relieved by the arrival of Ali. So buoyant a soul
+had Bones, that from the deeps of despair into which he was beginning to
+sink he rose to heights of confidence, not to say self-assurance, that
+were positively staggering.
+
+"Miss Patricia, ladies and gentlemen," said Bones briskly, "we have here
+Ali Abid, confidential servant and faithful retainer. I will now
+endeavour to demonstrate the power of the human eye."
+
+He met the stolid gaze of Ali and stared. He stared terribly and
+alarmingly, and Ali, to do him justice, stared back.
+
+"Close your eyes," commanded Bones. "You can't open them, can you?"
+
+"Sir," said Ali, "optics of subject are hermetically sealed."
+
+"I will now put him in a trance," said Bones, and waved his hand
+mysteriously. Ali rocked backward and forward, and would have fallen but
+for the supporting arm of the demonstrator. "He is now insensible to
+pain," said Bones proudly.
+
+"Lend me your hatpin, Pat," said Hamilton.
+
+"I will now awaken him," said Bones hastily, and snapped his fingers.
+Ali rose to his feet with great dignity. "Thank you, Ali; you may go,"
+said his master, and turned, ready to receive the congratulations of
+the party.
+
+"Do you seriously believe that you mesmerized that humbug?"
+
+Bones drew himself erect. "Sir and captain," he said stiffly, "do you
+suggest I am a jolly old impostor? You saw the sentry, sir, you saw the
+woman, sir."
+
+"And I saw Ali," said Hamilton, nodding, "and I'll bet he gave the
+sentry something and the woman something to play the goat for you."
+
+Bones bowed slightly and distantly. "I cannot discuss my powers, dear
+old sir; you realize that there are some subjects too delicate to broach
+except with kindred spirits. I shall continue my studies of psychic
+mysteries undeterred by the cold breath of scepticism." He saluted
+everybody, and departed with chin up and shoulders squared, a picture of
+offended dignity.
+
+That night Sanders lay in bed, snuggled up on his right side, which
+meant that he had arrived at the third stage of comfort which precedes
+that fading away of material life which men call sleep. Half consciously
+he listened to the drip, drip, drip of rain on the stoep, and promised
+himself that he would call upon Abiboo in the morning, to explain the
+matter of a choked gutter, for Abiboo had sworn, by the Prophet and
+certain minor relatives of the Great One, that he had cleared every
+bird's nest from the ducts about the Residency.
+
+Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip!
+
+Sanders sank with luxurious leisure into the nothingness of the night.
+
+Drip-tap, drip-tap, drip-tap!
+
+He opened his eyes slowly, slid one leg out of bed, and groped for his
+slippers. He slipped into the silken dressing-gown which had been flung
+over the end of the bed, corded it about him, and switched on the
+electric light. Then he passed out into the big common room, with its
+chairs drawn together in overnight comradeship, and the solemn tick of
+the big clock to emphasize the desolation. He paused a second to switch
+on the lights, then went to the door and flung it open.
+
+"Enter!" he said in Arabic.
+
+The man who came in was naked, save for a tarboosh on his head and a
+loin-cloth about his middle. His slim body shone with moisture, and
+where he stood on the white matting were two little pools. Kano from his
+brown feet to the soaked fez, he stood erect with that curious
+assumption of pride and equality which the Mussulman bears with less
+offence to his superiors than any other race.
+
+"Peace on this house," he said, raising his hand.
+
+"Speak, Ahmet," said Sanders, dropping into a big chair and stretching
+back, with his clasped hands behind his head. He eyed the man gravely
+and without resentment, for no spy would tap upon his window at night
+save that the business was a bad one.
+
+"Lord," said the man, "it is shameful that I should wake your lordship
+from your beautiful dream, but I came with the river."[7] He looked down
+at his master, and in the way of certain Kano people, who are
+dialecticians to a man, he asked: "Lord, it is written in the Sura of
+Ya-Sin, 'To the sun it is not given to overtake the moon----'"
+
+[Footnote 7: I came when I could.]
+
+"'Nor doth the night outstrip the day; but each in his own sphere doth
+journey on,'" finished Sanders patiently. "Thus also begins the Sura of
+the Cave: 'Praise be to God, Who hath sent down the book to his servant,
+and hath put no crookedness into it.' Therefore, Ahmet, be plain to me,
+and leave your good speeches till you meet the abominable Sufi."
+
+The man sank to his haunches. "Lord," he said, "from the bend of the
+river, where the Isisi divides the land of the N'gombi from the lands of
+the Good Chief, I came, travelling by day and night with the river, for
+many strange things have happened which are too wonderful for me. This
+Chief Busesi, whom all men call good, has a daughter by his second wife.
+In the year of the High Crops she was given to a stranger from the
+forest, him they call Gufuri-Bululu, and he took her away to live in his
+hut."
+
+Sanders sat up. "Go on, man," he said.
+
+"Lord, she has returned and performs wonderful magic," said the man,
+"for by the wonder of her eyes she can make dead men live and live men
+die, and all people are afraid. Also, lord, there was a wise man in the
+forest, who was blind, and he had a daughter who was the prop and staff
+of him, and because of his wisdom, and because she hated all who
+rivalled her, the woman D'rona Gufuri told certain men to seize the girl
+and hold her in a deep pool of water until she was dead."
+
+"This is a bad palaver," said Sanders; "but you shall tell me what you
+mean by the wonder of her eyes."
+
+"Lord," said the man, "she looks upon men, and they do her will. Now, it
+is her will that there shall be a great dance on the Rind of the Moon,
+and after she shall send the spears of the people of Busesi--who is old
+and silly, and for this reason is called good--against the N'gombi
+folk."
+
+"Oh," said Sanders, biting his lip in thought, "by the wonder of her
+eyes!"
+
+"Lord," said the man, "even I have seen this, for she has stricken men
+to the ground by looking at them, and some she has made mad, and others
+foolish."
+
+Sanders turned his head at a noise from the doorway. The tall figure of
+Hamilton stood peering sleepily at the light.
+
+"I heard your voice," he said apologetically. "What is the trouble?"
+
+Briefly Sanders related the story the man had told.
+
+"Wow!" said Hamilton, in a paroxysm of delight.
+
+"What's wrong?"
+
+"Bones!" shouted Hamilton. "Bones is the fellow. Let him go up and
+subdue her with his eye. He's the very fellow. I'll go over and call
+him, sir."
+
+He hustled into his clothing, slipped on a mackintosh, and, making his
+way across the dark square, admitted himself to the sleeping-hut of
+Lieutenant Tibbetts. By the light of his electric torch he discovered
+the slumberer. Bones lay on his back, his large mouth wide open, one
+thin leg thrust out from the covers, and he was making strange noises.
+Hamilton found the lamp and lit it, then he proceeded to the
+heart-breaking task of waking his subordinate. "Up, you lazy devil!" he
+shouted, shaking Bones by the shoulder.
+
+Bones opened his eyes and blinked rapidly. "On the word 'One!'" he said
+hoarsely, "carry the left foot ten inches to the left front, at the same
+time bringing the rifle to a horizontal position at the right side.
+One!"
+
+"Wake up, wake up, Bones!"
+
+Bones made a wailing noise. It was the noise of a mother panther who has
+returned to her lair to discover that her offspring have been eaten by
+wild pigs. "Whar-r-ow-ow!" he said, and turned over on his right side.
+
+Hamilton pocketed his torch, and, lifting Bones bodily from the bed, let
+him fall with a thud.
+
+Bones scrambled up, staring. "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "I stand
+before you a ruined man. Drink has been my downfall, as the dear old
+judge remarked. I _did_ kill Wilfred Morgan, and I plead the unwritten
+law." He saluted stiffly, collapsed on to his pillow, and fell instantly
+into a deep child-like sleep.
+
+Hamilton groaned. He had had occasion to wake Bones from his beauty
+sleep before, but he had never been as bad as this. He took a soda
+siphon from the little sideboard and depressed the lever, holding the
+outlet above his victim's head.
+
+Bones leapt up with a roar. "Hello, Ham!" he said quite sanely. "Well
+dear old officer, this is the finish! You stand by the lifeboat an'
+shoot down anybody who attempts to leave the ship before the torpedoes
+are saved. I'm goin' down into the hold to have a look at the women an'
+children." He saluted, and was stepping out into the wet night, when
+Hamilton caught his arm.
+
+"Steady, the Buffs, my sleeping beauty! Dress yourself. Sanders wants
+you."
+
+Bones nodded. "I'll just drive over and see him," he said, climbed back
+into bed, and was asleep in a second.
+
+Hamilton put out the light and went back to the Residency. "I hadn't
+the heart to cut his ear off," he said regretfully. "I'm afraid we
+shan't be able to consult Bones till the morning."
+
+Sanders nodded. "Anyway, I will wait for the morning. I have told Abiboo
+to get stores and wood aboard, and to have steam in the _Zaire_. Let us
+emulate Bones."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Hamilton piously.
+
+Bones came blithely to breakfast, a dapper and a perfectly groomed
+figure. He received the news of the ominous happenings in the N'gombi
+country with that air of profound solemnity which so annoyed Hamilton.
+
+"I wish you had called me in the night," he said gravely. "Dear old
+officer, I think it was due to me."
+
+"Called you! Called you! Why--why----" spluttered Hamilton.
+
+"In fact, we did call you Bones, but we could not wake you," smoothed
+Sanders.
+
+A look of amazement spread over the youthful face of Lieutenant
+Tibbetts. "You called me?" he asked incredulously. "Called _me_?"
+
+"_You!_" hissed Hamilton. "I not only called you, but I kicked you.
+I poured water on you, and I chucked you up to the roof of the hut and
+dropped you."
+
+A faint but unbelieving smile from Bones. "Are you sure it was me,
+dear old officer?" he asked, and Hamilton choked. "I only ask," said
+Bones, turning blandly to the girl, "because I'm a notoriously light
+sleeper, dear old Miss Patricia. The slightest stir wakes me, and
+instantly I'm in possession of all my faculties. Bosambo calls me
+'Eye-That-Never-Shuts----'"
+
+"Bosambo is a notorious leg-puller," interrupted Hamilton irritably.
+"Really, Bones----"
+
+"Often, dear old Sister," Bones went on impressively, "campin' out in
+the forest, an' sunk in the profound sleep which youth an' a good
+conscience brings, something has wakened me, an' I've jumped to my feet,
+a revolver in my hand, an' what do you think it was?"
+
+"A herd of wild elephants walking on your chest?" suggested Hamilton.
+
+"What do you think it was, dear old Patricia miss?" persisted Bones, and
+interrupted her ingenious speculation in his usual aggravating manner:
+"The sound of a footstep breakin' a twig a hundred yards away!"
+
+"Wonderful!" sneered Hamilton, stirring his coffee. "Bones, if you could
+only spell, what a novelist you'd be!"
+
+"The point is," said Sanders, with good-humoured patience, which
+brought, for some curious reason, a warm sense of intimacy to the girl,
+"you've got to go up and try your eye on the woman D'rona Gufuri."
+
+Bones leant back in his chair and spoke with deliberation and
+importance, for he realized that he, and only he, could supply a
+solution to the difficulties of his superiors.
+
+"The power of the human eye, when applied by a jolly old scientist to a
+heathen, is irresistible. You may expect me down with the prisoner in
+four days."
+
+"She may be more trouble than you expect," said Sanders seriously. "The
+longer one lives in native lands, the less confident can one be. There
+have been remarkable cases of men possessing the power which this woman
+has----"
+
+"And which I have, sir an' Excellency, to an extraordinary extent,"
+interrupted Bones firmly. "Have no fear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thirty-six hours later Bones stood before the woman D'rona Gufuri.
+
+"Lord," said the woman, "men speak evilly of me to Sandi, and now you
+have come to take me to the Village of Irons."
+
+"That is true, D'rona," said Bones, and looked into her eyes.
+
+"Lord," said the woman, speaking slowly, "you shall go back to Sandi and
+say, 'I have not seen the woman D'rona'--for, lord, is this not truth?"
+
+"I'wa! I'wa!" muttered Bones thickly.
+
+"You cannot see me Tibbetti, and I am not here," said the woman, and she
+spoke before the assembled villagers, who stood, knuckles to teeth,
+gazing awe-stricken upon the scene.
+
+"I cannot see you," said Bones sleepily.
+
+"And now you cannot hear me, lord?"
+
+Bones did not reply.
+
+The woman took him by the arm and led him through the patch of wood
+which fringes the river and separates beach from village. None followed
+them; even the two Houssas who formed the escort of Lieutenant Tibbetts
+stayed rooted to the spot.
+
+Bones passed into the shadow of the trees, the woman's hand on his arm.
+Then suddenly from the undergrowth rose a lank figure, and D'rona of the
+Magic Eye felt a bony hand at her throat. She laughed.
+
+"O man, whoever you be, look upon me in this light, and your strength
+shall melt."
+
+She twisted round to meet her assailant's face, and shrieked aloud, for
+he was blind. And Bones stood by without moving, without seeing or
+hearing, whilst the strong hands of the blind witch-doctor, whose
+daughter she had slain, crushed the life from her body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Of course, sir," explained Bones, "you may think she mesmerized me. On
+the other hand, it is quite possible that she acted under my influence.
+It's a moot point, sir an' Excellency--jolly moot!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE HOODED KING
+
+
+There was a certain Portuguese governor--this was in the days when
+Colhemos was Colonial Minister--who had a small legitimate income and an
+extravagant wife. This good lady had a villa at Cintra, a box at the
+Real Theatre de Sao Carlos, and a motor-car, and gave five o'clocks at
+the Hotel Nunes to the aristocracy and gentry who inhabited that spot,
+of whom the ecstatic Spaniard said, "dejar a Cintra, y ver al mundo
+entero, es, con verdad caminar en capuchera."
+
+Since her husband's salary was exactly $66.50 weekly and the upkeep of
+the villa alone was twice that amount, it is not difficult to understand
+that Senhor Bonaventura was a remarkable man.
+
+Colhemos came over to the Foreign Office in the Praco de Commercio one
+day and saw Dr. Sarabesta, and Sarabesta, who was both a republican and
+a sinner, was also ambitious, or he had a Plan and an Ideal--two very
+dangerous possessions for a politician, since they lead inevitably to
+change, than which nothing is more fatal to political systems.
+
+"Colhemos," said the doctor dramatically, "you are ruining me! You are
+bringing me to the dust and covering me with the hatred and mistrust of
+the Powers!"
+
+He folded his arms and rose starkly from the chair, his beard all
+a-bristle, his deep little eyes glaring.
+
+"What is wrong, Baptisa?" asked Colhemos.
+
+The other flung out his arms in an extravagant gesture.
+
+"Ruin!" he cried somewhat inadequately.
+
+He opened the leather portfolio which lay on the table and extracted six
+sheets of foolscap paper.
+
+"Read!" he said, and subsided into his padded armchair a picture of
+gloom.
+
+The sheets of foolscap were surmounted by crests showing an emaciated
+lion and a small horse with a spiral horn in his forehead endeavouring
+to climb a chafing-dish which had been placed on edge for the purpose,
+and was suitably inscribed with another lion, two groups of leopards and
+a harp.
+
+Colhemos did not stop to admire the menagerie, but proceeded at once to
+the literature. It was in French, and had to do with a certain condition
+of affairs in Portuguese Central Africa which "constituted a grave and
+increasing menace to the native subjects" of "Grande Bretagne." There
+were hints, "which His Majesty's Government would be sorry to believe,
+of raids and requisitions upon the native manhood" of this country which
+differed little from slave raids.
+
+Further, "Mr. Commissioner Sanders of the Territories regretted to
+learn" that these labour requisitions resulted in a condition of affairs
+not far removed from slavery.
+
+Colhemos read through the dispatch from start to finish, and put it down
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Pinto has been overdoing it," he admitted. "I shall have to write to
+him."
+
+"What you write to Pinto may be interesting enough to print," said Dr.
+Sarabesta violently, "but what shall I write to London? This
+Commissioner Sanders is a fairly reliable man, and his Government will
+act upon what he says."
+
+Colhemos, who was really a great man (it was a distinct loss when he
+faced a firing platoon in the revolutionary days of '12), tapped his
+nose with a penholder.
+
+"You can say that we shall send a special commissioner to the M'fusi
+country to report, and that he will remain permanently established in
+the M'fusi to suppress lawless acts."
+
+The doctor looked up wonderingly.
+
+"Pinto won't like that," said he, "besides which, the M'fusi are quite
+unmanageable. The last time we tried to bring them to reason it
+cost--Santa Maria!... and the lives!... phew!"
+
+Colhemos nodded.
+
+"The duc de Sagosta," he said slowly, "is an enthusiastic young man. He
+is also a royalist and allied by family ties to Dr. Ceillo of the Left.
+He is, moreover, an Anglomaniac--though why he should be so when his
+mother was an American woman I do not know. He shall be our
+commissioner, my dear Baptisa."
+
+His dear Baptisa sat bolt upright, every hair in his bristling head
+erect.
+
+"A royalist!" he gasped, "do you want to set Portugal ablaze?"
+
+"There are moments when I could answer 'Yes' to that question," said the
+truthful Colhemos "but for the moment I am satisfied that there will be
+no fireworks. It will do no harm to send the boy. It will placate the
+Left and please the Clerics--it will also consolidate our reputation for
+liberality and largeness of mind. Also the young man will either be
+killed or fall a victim to the sinister influences of that corruption
+which, alas, has so entered into the vitals of our Colonial service."
+
+So Manuel duc de Sagosta was summoned, and prepared for the subject of
+his visit by telephone, came racing up from Cintra in his big American
+juggernaut, leapt up the stairs of the Colonial Office two at a time,
+and came to Colhemos' presence in a state of mind which may be described
+as a big mental whoop.
+
+"You will understand, Senhor," said Colhemos, "that I am doing that
+which may make me unpopular. For that I care nothing! My country is my
+first thought, and the glory and honour of our flag! Some day you may
+hold my portfolio in the Cabinet, and it will be well if you bring to
+your high and noble office the experience...."
+
+Then they all talked together, and the dark room flickered with
+gesticulating palms.
+
+Colhemos came to see the boy off by the M.N.P. boat which carried him to
+the African Coast.
+
+"I suppose, Senhor," said the duc, "there would be no objection on the
+part of the Government to my calling on my way at a certain British
+port. I have a friend in the English army--we were at Clifton
+together----"
+
+"My friend," said Colhemos, pressing the young man's hand warmly, "you
+must look upon England as a potential ally, and lose no opportunity
+which offers to impress upon our dear colleagues this fact, that behind
+England, unmoved, unshaken, faithful, stands the armed might of
+Portugal. May the saints have you in their keeping!"
+
+He embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bones was drilling recruits at headquarters when Hamilton hailed him
+from the edge of the square.
+
+"There's a pal of yours come to see you, Bones," he roared.
+
+Bones marched sedately to his superior and touched his helmet.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"A friend of yours--just landed from the Portuguese packet."
+
+Bones was mystified, and went up to the Residency to find a young man in
+spotless white being entertained by Patricia Hamilton and a very
+thoughtful Sanders.
+
+The duc de Sagosta leapt to his feet as Bones came up the verandah.
+
+"Hullo, Conk!" he yelled hilariously.
+
+Bones stared.
+
+"God bless my life," he stammered, "it's Mug!"
+
+There was a terrific hand-shaking accompanied by squawking inquiries
+which were never answered, uproarious laughter, back patting, brazen and
+baseless charges that each was growing fat, and Sanders watched it with
+great kindness.
+
+"Here's old Ham," said Bones, "you ought to know Ham--Captain Hamilton,
+sir, my friend, the duke of something or other--but you can call him
+Mug--Miss Hamilton--this is Mug."
+
+"We've already been introduced," she laughed. "But why do you let him
+call you Mug?"
+
+The duc grinned.
+
+"I like Mug," he said simply.
+
+He was to stay to lunch, for the ship was not leaving until the
+afternoon, and Bones carried him off to his hut.
+
+"A joyous pair," said Hamilton enviously. "Lord, if I was only a boy
+again!"
+
+Sanders shook his head.
+
+"You don't echo that wish?" said Pat.
+
+"I wasn't thinking about that--I was thinking of the boy. I dislike this
+M'fusi business, and I can't think why the Government sent him. They are
+a pretty bad lot--their territory is at the back of the Akasava, and the
+Chief of the M'fusi is a rascal."
+
+"But he says that he has been sent to reform them," said the girl.
+
+Sanders smiled.
+
+"It is not a job I should care to undertake--and yet----"
+
+He knitted his forehead.
+
+"And yet----?"
+
+"I could reform them--Bones could reform them. But if they were reformed
+it would break Bonaventura, for he holds his job subject to their
+infamy."
+
+At lunch Sanders was unusually silent, a silence which was unnoticed,
+save by the girl. Bones and his friend, however, needed no stimulation.
+Lunch was an almost deafening meal, and when the time came for the duc
+to leave, the whole party went down to the beach to see him embark.
+
+"Good-bye, old Mug!" roared Bones, as the boat pulled away. "Whoop! hi!
+how!"
+
+"You're a noisy devil," said Hamilton, admiringly.
+
+"Vox populi, vox Dei," said Bones.
+
+He had an unexpected visitor that evening, for whilst he was dressing
+for dinner, Sanders came into his hut--an unusual happening.
+
+What Sanders had to say may not be related since it was quite
+unofficial, but Bones came to dinner that night and behaved with such
+decorum and preserved a mien so grave, that Hamilton thought he was ill.
+
+The duc continued his journey down the African Coast and presently came
+to a port which was little more than a beach, a jetty, a big white
+house, and by far the most imposing end of the Moanda road. In due time,
+he arrived by the worst track in the world (he was six days on the
+journey) at Moanda itself, and came into the presence of the Governor.
+
+Did the duc but know it, his Excellency had also been prepared for the
+young man's mission. The mail had arrived by carrier the day before the
+duc put in his appearance, and Pinto Bonaventura had his little piece
+all ready to say.
+
+"I will give you all the assistance I possibly can," he said, as they
+sat at _dejeuner_, "but, naturally, I cannot guarantee you immunity."
+
+"Immunity?" said the puzzled duc.
+
+Senhor Bonaventura nodded gravely.
+
+"Nothing is more repugnant to me than slavery," he said, "unless it be
+the terrible habit of drinking. If I could sweep these evils out of
+existence with a wave of my hand, believe me I would do so; but I cannot
+perform miracles, and the Government will not give me sufficient troops
+to suppress these practices which every one of us hold in abhorrence."
+
+"But," protested the duc, a little alarmed, "since I am going to reform
+the M'fusi...."
+
+The Governor choked over his coffee and apologized. He did not laugh,
+because long residence in Central Africa had got him out of the habit,
+and had taught him a certain amount of self-control in all things except
+the consumption of marsala.
+
+"Pray go on," he said, wearing an impassive face.
+
+"It will be to the interests of Portugal, no less than to your
+Excellency's interest," said the young man, leaning across the table and
+speaking with great earnestness, "if I can secure a condition of peace,
+prosperity, sobriety, and if I can establish the Portuguese law in this
+disturbed area."
+
+"Undoubtedly," acknowledged the older man with profound seriousness.
+
+So far from the duc's statement representing anything near the truth, it
+may be said that a restoration of order would serve his Excellency very
+badly indeed. In point of fact he received something like eight
+shillings for every "head" of "recruited labour." He also received a
+commission from the same interested syndicates which exported
+able-bodied labourers, a commission amounting to six shillings upon
+every case of square-face, and a larger sum upon every keg of rum that
+came into the country.
+
+Sobriety and law would, in fact, spell much discomfort to the elegant
+lady who lived in the villa at Cintra, and would considerably diminish
+not only Senhor Bonaventura's handsome balance at the Bank of Brazil,
+but would impoverish certain ministers, permanent and temporary, who
+looked to their dear Pinto for periodical contributions to what was
+humorously described as "The Party Fund."
+
+Yet the duc de Sagosta went into the wilds with a high heart and a
+complete faith, in his youthful and credulous soul, that he had behind
+him the full moral and physical support of a high-minded and patriotic
+Governor. The high-minded and patriotic Governor, watching the caravan
+of his new assistant disappearing through the woods which fringe Moanda,
+expressed in picturesque language his fervent hope that the mud, the
+swamp, the forest and the wilderness of the M'fusi country would swallow
+up this young man for evermore, amen. The unpopularity of the new
+Commissioner was sealed when the Governor learnt of his visit to
+Sanders, for "Sanders" was a name at which his Excellency made
+disapproving noises.
+
+The predecessor of the duc de Sagosta was dead. His grave was in
+the duc's front garden, and was covered with rank grass. The new-comer
+found the office correspondence in order (as a glib native clerk
+demonstrated); he also found 103 empty bottles behind the house, and
+understood the meaning of that coarse grave in the garden. He found
+that the last index number in the letter-book was 951.
+
+It is remarkable that the man he succeeded should have found, in one
+year, 951 subjects for correspondence, but it is the fact. Possibly nine
+hundred of the letters had to do with the terrible state of the
+Residency at Uango-Bozeri. The roof leaked, the foundations had settled,
+and not a door closed as it should close. On the day of his arrival the
+duc found a _mamba_ resting luxuriously in his one armchair, a discovery
+which suggested the existence of a whole colony of these deadly
+brutes--the _mamba_ bite is fatal in exactly ninety seconds--under or
+near the house.
+
+The other fifty dispatches probably had to do with the late
+Commissioner's arrears of pay, for Portugal at that time was in the
+throes of her annual crisis, and ministries were passing through the
+Government offices at Lisbon with such rapidity that before a cheque
+could be carried from the Foreign Office to the bank, it was out of
+date.
+
+Uango Bozeri is 220 miles by road from the coast, and is the centre of
+the child-like people of the M'fusi. Here the duc dwelt and had his
+being, as Governor of 2,000 square miles, and overlord of some million
+people who were cannibals with a passion for a fiery liquid which was
+described by traders as "rum." It was as near rum as the White City is
+to Heaven; that is to say, to the uncultivated taste it might have been
+rum, and anyway was as near to rum as the taster could expect to get.
+
+This is all there is to be said about the duc de Sagosta, save that his
+headman swindled him, his soldiers were conscienceless natives
+committing acts of brigandage in his innocent name, whilst his chief at
+Moanda was a peculating and incompetent scoundrel.
+
+At the time when the duc was finding life a bitter and humiliating
+experience, and had reached the stage when he sat on his predecessor's
+grave for company, a small and unauthorized party crossed the frontier
+from the British Territories in search of adventure.
+
+Now it happened that the particular region through which the border-line
+passed was governed by the Chief of the Greater M'fusi, who was a
+cannibal, a drunkard, and a master of two regiments.
+
+The duc had been advised not to interfere with the chief of his people,
+and he had (after one abortive and painful experience) obeyed his
+superiors, accepting the hut tax which was sent to him (and which was
+obviously and insolently inadequate) without demur.
+
+No white man journeyed to the city of the M'fusi without invitation
+from the chief, and as Chief Karata never issued such invitation, the
+Greater M'fusi was a _terra incognita_ even to his Excellency the
+Governor-General of the Central and Western Provinces.
+
+Karata was a drunkard approaching lunacy. It was his whim for weeks on
+end to wear on his head the mask of a goat. At other times, "as a mark
+of his confidence in devils," he would appear hidden beneath a plaited
+straw extinguisher which fitted him from head to foot. He was eccentric
+in other ways which need not be particularized, but he was never so
+eccentric that he welcomed strangers.
+
+Unfortunately for those concerned, the high road from the Territories
+passed through the M'fusi drift. And one day there came a panting
+messenger from the keeper of the drift who flung himself down at the
+king's feet.
+
+"Lord," said he, "there is a white man at the drift, and with him a
+certain chief and his men."
+
+"You will take the men, bringing them to me tied with ropes," said the
+king, who looked at the messenger with glassy eyes and found some
+difficulty in speaking, for he was at the truculent stage of his second
+bottle.
+
+The messenger returned and met the party on the road. What was his
+attitude towards the intruders it is impossible to say. He may have been
+insolent, secure in the feeling that he was representing his master's
+attitude towards white men; he may have offered fight in the illusion
+that the six warriors he took with him were sufficient to enforce the
+king's law. It is certain that he never returned.
+
+Instead there came to the king's kraal a small but formidable party
+under a white man, and they arrived at a propitious moment, for the
+ground before the king's great hut was covered with square bottles, and
+the space in front of the palace was crowded with wretched men chained
+neck to neck and waiting to march to the coast and slavery.
+
+The white man pushed back his helmet.
+
+"Goodness gracious Heavens!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly horrid!
+Bosambo, this is immensely illegal an' terrificly disgustin'."
+
+The Chief of the Ochori looked round.
+
+"Dis feller be dam' bad," was his effort.
+
+Bones walked leisurely to the shady canopy under which the king sat, and
+King Karata stared stupidly at the unexpected vision.
+
+"O King," said Bones in the Akasavian vernacular which runs from Dacca
+to the Congo, "this is an evil thing that you do--against all law."
+
+Open-mouthed Karata continued to stare.
+
+To the crowded kraal, on prisoner and warrior, councillor and dancing
+woman alike, came a silence deep and unbroken.
+
+They heard the words spoken in a familiar tongue, and marvelled that a
+white man should speak it. Bones was carrying a stick and taking
+deliberate aim, and after two trial strokes he brought the nobbly end
+round with a "swish!"
+
+A bottle of square-face smashed into a thousand pieces, and there arose
+on the hot air the sickly scent of crude spirits. Fascinated, silent,
+motionless, King Karata, named not without reason "The Terrible,"
+watched the destruction as bottle followed bottle.
+
+Then as a dim realization of the infamy filtered through his thick
+brain, he rose with a growl like a savage animal, and Bones turned
+quickly. But Bosambo was quicker. One stride brought him to the king's
+side.
+
+"Down, dog!" he said. "O Karata, you are very near the painted hut where
+dead kings lie."
+
+The king sank back and glared to and fro.
+
+All that was animal in him told of his danger; he smelt death in the
+mirthless grin of the white man; he smelt it as strongly under the hand
+of the tall native wearing the monkey-tails of chieftainship. If they
+would only stand away from him they would die quickly enough. Let them
+get out of reach, and a shout, an order, would send them bloodily to the
+ground with little kicks and twitches as the life ran out of them.
+
+But they stood too close, and that order of his meant his death.
+
+"O white man," he began.
+
+"Listen, black man," said Bosambo, and lapsed into his English; "hark
+um, you dam' black nigger--what for you speak um so?"
+
+"You shall say 'master' to me, Karata," said Bones easily, "for in my
+land 'white man' is evil talk."[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: In most native countries "white man" is seldom employed
+save as a piece of insolence. It is equivalent to the practice of
+referring to the natives as niggers.]
+
+"Master," said the king sullenly, "this is a strange thing--for I see
+that you are English and we be servants of another king. Also it is
+forbidden that any white--that any master should stand in my kraal
+without my word, and I have driven even Igselensi from my face."
+
+"That is all foolish talk, Karata," said Bones. "This is good talk:
+shall Karata live or shall he die? This you shall say. If you send away
+this palaver and say to your people that we are folk whom you desire
+shall live in the shadow of the king's hut, then you live. Let him say
+less than this, Bosambo, and you strike quickly."
+
+The king looked from face to face. Bones had his hand in the uniform
+jacket pocket. Bosambo balanced his killing-spear on the palm of his
+hand, the chief saw with the eye of an expert that the edge was razor
+sharp.
+
+Then he turned to the group whom Bones had motioned away when he started
+to speak to the king.
+
+"This palaver is finished," he said, "and the white lord stays in my hut
+for a night."
+
+"Good egg," said Bones as the crowd streamed from the kraal.
+
+Senhor Bonaventura heard of the arrival of a white man at the chief's
+great kraal and was not perturbed, because there were certain favourite
+traders who came to the king from time to time. He was more concerned by
+the fact that a labour draft of eight hundred men who had been promised
+by Karata had not yet reached Moanda, but frantic panic came from the
+remarkable information of Karata's eccentricities which had reached him
+from his lieutenant.
+
+The duc's letter may be reproduced.
+
+     "ILLUSTRIOUS AND EXCELLENT SENHOR,
+
+     "It is with joy that I announce to you the most remarkable
+     reformation of King Karata. The news was brought to me that the
+     king had received a number of visitors of an unauthorized
+     character, and though I had, as I have reported to you, Illustrious
+     and Excellent Senhor, the most unpleasant experience at the hands
+     of the king, I deemed it advisable to go to the city of the Greater
+     M'fusi and conduct an inquiry.
+
+     "I learnt that the king had indeed received the visitors, and that
+     they had departed on the morning of my arrival carrying with them
+     one of their number who was sick. With this party was a white man.
+     But the most remarkable circumstance, Illustrious and Excellent
+     Senhor, was that the king had called a midnight palaver of his
+     councillors and high people of state and had told them that the
+     strangers had brought news of such sorrowful character that for
+     four moons it would be forbidden to look upon his face. At the end
+     of that period he would disappear from the earth and become a god
+     amongst the stars.
+
+     "At these words, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, the king with
+     some reluctance took from one of the strangers a bag in which two
+     eyes had been cut, and pulled it over his head and went back into
+     his hut.
+
+     "Since then he has done many remarkable things. He has forbidden
+     the importation of drink, and has freed all labour men to their
+     homes. He has nominated Zifingini, the elder chief of the M'fusi,
+     to be king after his departure, and has added another fighting
+     regiment to his army.
+
+     "He is quite changed, and though they cannot see his face and he
+     has banished all his wives, relatives and councillors to a distant
+     village, he is more popular than ever.
+
+     "Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, I feel that at last I am seeing
+     the end of the old regime and that we may look forward to a period
+     of sobriety and prosperity in the M'fusi.
+
+     "Receive the assurance, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, of my
+     distinguished consideration."
+
+His Excellency went purple and white.
+
+"Holy mother!" he spluttered apoplectically, "this is ruin!"
+
+With trembling hands he wrote a telegram. Translated in its sense it was
+to this effect--
+
+"Recall de Sagosta without fail or there will be nothing doing on pay
+day."
+
+He saw this dispatched on its way, and returned to his bureau. He picked
+up the duc's letter and read it again: then he saw there was a
+postscript.
+
+     "P.S.--In regard to the strangers who visited the king, the man
+     they carried away on a closed litter was very sick indeed,
+     according to the accounts of woodmen who met the party. He was
+     raving at the top of his voice, but the white man was singing very
+     loudly.
+
+     "P.SS.--I have just heard, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, that
+     the Hooded King (as his people call him) has sent off all his
+     richest treasures and many others which he has taken from the huts
+     of his deported relatives to one Bosambo, who is a chief of the
+     Ochori in British Territory, and is distantly related to Senhor
+     Sanders, the Commissioner of that Territory."
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetter's errors; in all
+other respects, every effort has been made to be true to the author's
+words and intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 25803.txt or 25803.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/8/0/25803/
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/25803.zip b/25803.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..707e8d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25803.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bace6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #25803 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25803)