of
white men in bulk: to the Wongolo merely vague stories from the north of
the conquest of the Sudan by the British. Marufa's ambitions in the craft
were almost submerged in the dread that, wizard though he was, he would
have small chance of distinction and power among a race of wizards. To
Zalu Zako, although the prospect of unlimited white men swooping upon them
was terrifying, his semi-conscious mind was rather occupied with Bakuma
than with affairs of state which seemed merely to exist to torment lovers.
However he, too, was sufficiently impressed to consider seriously the
advisability of submitting before it was too late; the motivating
principle of the scheme was an idea which suggested that, in some
indefinable way, such action might lead to the avoidance of the ban of
godhood and thus to the reinstatement of Bakuma in the realm of
possibilities.

To Bakahenzie the report was more alarming than to the others, inasmuch as
it appeared to portend the irretrievable loss of his power. He saw the
effect upon their minds, the inclination to yield to the new conqueror,
which, of course, would mean the last of his followers being swept away in
the crowd like dry leaves in the wind. But more than the others he
suspected the motives of Sakamata, the man whom he had unfrocked. Arguing
in terms of his own mental processes he saw correctly enough that Sakamata
was surely playing for himself, and guessed equally truly that Sakamata
would get, or imagined that he would get, many rewards, political as well
as in kind, for his services as jackal to the white man. But he listened
and said no word for, or against, him. He was astute enough never to make
a move until he had, or thought that he had, all the moves of the game
worked out. Marufa was just as wily; he related the news given by Sakamata
in a voice which gave no hint by tone or word what any of his opinions
might be. Then, as they sat like graven images, supremely indifferent to
the doings of Sakamata or aught else, entered the warrior bearing
greetings from Birnier to Zalu Zako.

Immediately Zalu Zako, to whose less skilled mind in intrigue this
succession of world-shaking events was bewildering, feared that already
the plague of white men like locusts had commenced. But when he learned
that the white man was alone and was Infunyana, the only white man whom he
had ever met, he perceived vaguely some remote prospect of achieving his
desires. Almost eagerly, for a native,