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He beckoned the three men who had come down from the Akasava as bearers of the invitation. "Say again what your master desires," he said. "Thus speaks N'gori, and I talk with his voice," said the spokesman, "that you shall cut down the devil-stick which Sandi planted in our midst, for it brings shame to us, and also to M'fosa the son of our master."
A rope of monkeys' tails covers one broad shoulder; his left arm and hand were hidden by an oblong shield of hide. In one hand he held a slim throwing spear and this he balanced delicately. "I am Bosambo of the Ochori," he said magnificently and unnecessarily; "you sent for me and I have come bringing a thousand spears." M'fosa blinked, but said nothing.
"On the river," Bosambo went on, "I met many canoes that went to a killing behold!" It was the head of M'fosa's lieutenant, who had charge of the surprise party. For a moment M'fosa looked, then turned to leap, and Bosambo's spear caught him in mid-air. "Jolly old Bosambo!" muttered Bones, and fainted. Four thousand miles away Sanders was offering his apologies to a startled company.
Lieutenant Tibbetts, helmetless, his coat torn, his lip bleeding, offered no resistance when they strapped him to the smooth high pole. Almost at his feet lay the dead Houssa orderly whom M'fosa had struck down from behind. In a wide circle, their faces half revealed by the crackling fire which burnt in the centre, the people of the Akasava city looked on impressively.
Those were the days of the Cakitas or government chiefs, and it was under the beneficent sway of one of these that M'fosa grew to manhood, though many attempts were made to lure him to unfrequented waterways and blind crocodile creeks where a lame man might be lost, and no one be any the wiser. Chief of the eugenists was Kobolo, the boy's uncle, and N'gori's own brother.
"This," said Sanders, "is for him who injures M'fosa your son; upon this will I hang him. And if there be more men than one who take to the work of slaughter, behold! I will have yet another tree cut and hauled, and put in a place and upon that will I hang the other man.
In the faint light they saw him stiffen like a setter. "What is wrong?" Lord Castleberry was on his feet, and somebody clicked on the lights. But Sanders did not notice. He was looking towards the end of the room, and his face was set and hard. "O, M'fosa," he snarled, "O, dog!" They heard the strange staccato of the Bomongo tongue and wondered.
"My son," said N'gori uneasily, "this is a very high palaver, for many chiefs have risen and struck at the Government, and always Sandi has come with his soldiers, and there have been backs that have been sore for the space of a moon, and necks that have been sore for this time," he snapped finger, "and then have been sore no more." "Sandi has gone," said M'fosa.
This dissatisfied man, with several of M'fosa's cousins, once partially succeeded in kidnapping the lame boy, and they were on their way to certain middle islands in the broads of the river to accomplish their scheme which was to put out the eyes of M'fosa and leave him to die when Sanders had happened along. For he was a difficult man to please.
Bones saw the horror and braced himself to meet it. "O Sandi!" cried M'fosa, "O planter of ju-ju, come quickly!" "Dog!" M'fosa whipped round, the knife dropping from his hand. He knew the voice, was paralysed by the concentrated malignity in the voice. There stood Sandi not half a dozen paces from him.
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