"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.