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The baby's face creased in a smile. "It's nothing to laugh about, you silly ass," said Bones. "Master, of our Lord Tibbetti I do not know," said M'bisibi sullenly. "Yet you shall know before the sun is black," said Hamilton, "and your young men shall find him, or there is a tree for you, old man, a quick death by Ewa!"

Bones, his face scratched and bleeding, his uniform torn in a dozen places, came swiftly after him. "My bird, I think," said Bones, and caught the child unscientifically. Picture Bones with a baby under his arm a baby indignant, outraged, infernally uncomfortable, and grimacing a yell into being. "Lord," said M'bisibi, breathing quickly, "what do you seek?"

M'bisibi held the child on his outstretched hands, a fat little child, with large, wondering eyes that stared solemnly at the dancing flames, and sucked a small brown thumb contentedly. "Behold this child, oh chiefs and people," said M'bisibi, "who was born as I predicted, and is filled with devils!"

"I have sought, my lord," said M'bisibi, "all my hunters have searched the forest, yet we have not found him. A certain devil-pot is here." He fumbled under a native cloth and drew forth Bones' compass. "This only could we find on the forest path that leads to Inilaki." "And the child is with him?"

The baby turned his head so that his fat little neck was all rolled and creased, and said "Ah!" to the pretty fire, and chuckled. "Even now the devils speak," said M'bisibi, "but presently you shall hear them screaming through the world because I have scattered them," and he made his way to the bowed saplings.

"This cannot be," said he in a troubled voice; "for though I die and all that is wonderful to me shall pass out of this world, yet I must do no thing which is unlawful in the eyes of Sandi, my master, and of the great ones he has left behind to fulfil the law. Say this to M'bisibi from me, that I think he is very wise and understands ghosts and such-like palavers.

"He will lead you to a place more terrible," said M'ilitani, significantly, and sent a nimble climber into the trees to fasten a block and tackle to a stout branch, and thread a rope through. It was so effective that M'bisibi, an old man, became most energetically active. Lokali and swift messengers sent his villages to the search.

Bones reached the village two hours before the time of sacrifice and landed a force of twenty Houssas and a small Maxim gun. The village was peaceable, and there was no sign of anything untoward. Save this. The village was given over to old people and children. M'bisibi was an hour two hours four hours in the forest. He had gone north east south none knew whither.

"Thus says the woman my mother," he said at last, with the blank, monotonous delivery peculiar to all small boys who have been rehearsed in speech, "on a certain day when the moon was at full and the rain was in the forest so that we all heard it in the village, my mother bore a child who is my own brother, and, lord, because she feared things which the old man M'bisibi had spoken she went into the forest to a certain witch doctor, and there the child was born.

"Where do you come from, and why have you come?" asked Hamilton. "Lord, I have come from the village of M'bisibi," said the boy; "my mother has sent me because she fears for her life, my father being away on a great hunt. As for me," he went on, "my name is Tilimi-N'kema." "Speak on, Tilimi the Monkey," said Hamilton, "tell me why the woman your mother fears for her life."