r of the Houssas. And he felt
horribly guilty as he read Hamilton's letter, for the night before it
came he had most certainly entertained his company with a banjo
rendering of the Soldiers' Chorus from "Faust."

He rumpled his beautiful hair, jammed down his helmet, squared his
shoulders, and, with a fiendish expression on his face--an expression
intended by Bones to represent a stern, unbending devotion to duty, he
stepped forth from his tent determined to undo what mischief he had
done, and earn, if not the love, at least the respect of his people.

III

There is in all services a subtle fear and hope. They have to do less
with material consequence than with a sense of harmony which rejects the
discordance of failure. Also Hamilton was a human man, who, whilst he
respected Sanders and had a profound regard for his qualities, nourished
a secret faith that he might so carry on the work of the heaven-born
Commissioner without demanding the charity of his superiors.

He wished--not unnaturally--to spread a triumphant palm to his country
and say "Behold! There are the talents that Sanders left--I have
increased them, by my care, twofold."

He came down stream in some haste having completed the work of
pacification and stopped at the Village of Irons long enough to hand to
the Houssa warder four unhappy counsellors of the Isisi king.

"Keep these men for service against our lord Sandi's return."

At Bosinkusu he was delayed by a storm, a mad, whirling brute of a storm
that lashed the waters of the river and swept the _Zaire_ broadside on
towards the shore. At M'idibi, the villagers, whose duty it was to cut
and stack wood for the Government steamers, had gone into a forest to
meet a celebrated witch doctor, gambling on the fact that there was
another wooding village ten miles down stream and that Hamilton would
choose that for the restocking of his boat.

So that beyond a thin skeleton pile of logs on the river's edge--set up
to deceive the casual observer as he passed and approved of their
industry--there was no wood and Hamilton had to set his men to
wood-cutting.

He had nearly completed the heart-breaking work when the villagers
returned in a body, singing an unmusical song and decked about with
ropes of flowers.

"Now," explained the headman, "we have been to a palaver with a holy man
and he has promised us that some day there will come to us a great
harvest of corn which will be reaped by magic and laid