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"Oh, yes, I shall come back again," said Sanders, answering the question in the tune. "I hope things will go well in my absence." "How can they go well?" asked Hamilton, gently. "How can the Isisi live, or the Akasava sow his barbarous potatoes, or the sun shine, or the river run when Sandi Sitani is no longer in the land?"
If he could gain time time for some miraculous news to come to Hamilton, who, blissfully unconscious of the treachery to his second-in-command, was sleeping twenty miles downstream unconscious, too, of the Akasava fleet of canoes which was streaming towards his little steamer. Perhaps M'fosa guessed his thoughts.
Thus, the folk of the Isisi planning a little raid upon certain Akasava fishermen, who had established themselves unlawfully upon the Isisi river-line, put away their spears and folded their hands when N'bosini was mentioned, because Bones was unconsciously probing their excuse before they advanced it.
Now I tell you my mind that Sandi's fetish is dead as Sandi has passed from us, and this is the sign I desire I and my young men. We shall make a killing palaver in the face of the killing stick, and if Sandi lives and has not lied to us, he shall come from the end of the world as he said." He rose up from the ground. There was no doubt now who ruled the Akasava.
Bosambo was in the dark street instanter, his booming war-drum calling urgently. Twenty canoes filled with fighting men, paddling desperately with the stream, raced to the aid of the defenceless Akasava. At dawn, on the beach of the city, N'gori met his ally.
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.
He looked at the Chief, at Bosambo, at the river all aglow in the early morning sunlight, at the Zaire, with her sinister guns a-glitter, and then back at the Chief. He was not well versed in the dialect of the Akasava, and Bosambo must be his interpreter. "Very serious offence, old friend," said Bones, solemnly; "awfully serious muckin' about with spears and all that sort of thing.
O, wise and brave men of the Akasava who sit there quietly, daring not so much as to hit a finger before one who is a fool!" Again the silence fell. Bones, his helmet on the back of his head, his hands thrust into his pockets, came a little way down the hill towards the semi-circle of waiting eldermen. "O, brave men!" he went on, "O, wonderful seeker of danger! Behold!
"To bed! you insubordinate devil!" said Hamilton, sternly. In the meantime there was trouble in the Akasava country. Scarcely had Sanders left the land, when the lokali of the Lower Isisi sent the news thundering in waves of sound. Up and down the river and from village to village, from town to town, across rivers, penetrating dimly to the quiet deeps of the forest the story was flung.
"Ogibo also says that the father of his father was a great chief and was lord of all the Akasava " "That's sleeping sickness all right," said Hamilton bitterly. "Why the devil doesn't he wait till Sanders is back before he goes mad?"
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