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Yet he kept a tight hold upon himself, and by a supreme effort of will showed no sign of his perturbation. The palaver was of little value to Bones; the village was blandly innocent of murder or knowledge of murder. There was little short of open mockery and defiance when they pointed out certain indications that went to prove that this man was not of the Akasava, but of the higher Isisi.

Overhead the sky was a vivid blue, and the water which moved quickly between the rocky channel of the Lower Isisi caught something of the blue, though the thick green of elephant grass by the water's edge and the overhanging spread of gum trees took away from the clarity of reflection.

Also Bosambo knows, for he is a cunning man, and when we found he had put his warriors to the seeking we fought him, lord, for though the treasure may be Isisi or Akasava, of this I am sure it is not of the Ochori." Hamilton came to the Ochori city to find a red-eyed Bones stalking majestically up and down the beach. "What is the matter with you?" demanded Hamilton. "Fever?"

B'sano, the young chief of the Isisi, came out lazily from his hut and stood with outstretched feet and arms akimbo watching the nearing Houssa, and he had no fear, for it was said that now Sandi was away from the country no man had the authority to punish.

But though the wings of his beaters touched the border line of the Ochori on the right and the Isisi on the left, and though he passed through places which hitherto had been regarded as impenetrable on account of divers devils, yet he found no trace of the cunning kidnapper, who, if the truth be told, had broken through the lines in the night, dragging an unwilling and exasperated member of the British Government at the end of a rope fastened about his person.

Whereupon his forces were divided, and each chief ransacked his land for delicacies to feed them. It was a long palaver too long for the chiefs. Was the island Akasava or Isisi? Old men of either nation testified with oaths and swearings of death and other high matters that it was both.

From dawn to sunset Bosambo sat in the thatched palaver house, and on either side of him was a brass pot into which he tossed from time to time a grain of corn. And every grain stood for a successful argument in favour of one or the other of the contestants the pot to the right being for the Akasava, and that to the left for the Isisi.

Hamilton dropped his hand on his revolver butt, and for a moment there was murder in his eyes. "M'ilitani, there is a bad palaver in the N'bosini country," said the gossip-chief of the Lesser Isisi, and wagged his head impressively. Hamilton of the Houssas rose up from his camp chair and stretched himself to his full six feet.

So he gathered together two thousand men who were working on the road and were very pleased indeed to carry something lighter than rocks and felled trees, and with these spears he marched into the Isisi forest, burning and slaying whenever he came upon a little village which offered no opposition.

They eyed each other: Bosambo straight and muscular, a perfect figure of a man, N'gori grizzled and skinny, his brow furrowed with age. "Lord," said N'gori mildly, "if you take my spears you leave me bound to my enemies. How may I protect my villages against oppression by evil men of Isisi?" Bosambo sniffed a sure sign of mental perturbation. All that N'gori said was true.