driest ground.

"Poor old Sanders," said Hamilton ruefully, when he was again on the
_Zaire_, "I've so mixed up his people that he'll have to get a new map
made to find them again."

"You might tell me off to show him round, sir," suggested Bones, but
Hamilton did not jump at the offer.

He was getting more than a little rattled. Sanders was due back in a
month, and it seemed that scarcely a week passed but some complication
arose that further entangled a situation which was already too full of
loose and straying threads for his liking.

"I suppose the country is settled for a week at any rate," he said with
a little sigh of relief--but he reckoned without his People of the Well.

They moved, a straggling body of men and women, with their stiff walk
and their doleful song, a wild people with strange, pinched faces and
long black hair, along the river's edge.

A week's journeyings brought them to the Ochori country and to Bosambo,
who was holding a most important palaver.

It was held on Ochori territory, for the forbidden strip was by this
time so thickly planted with young trees that there was no place for a
man to sit.

"Lord," said Bosambo, "if you will return me the land which you have
stolen, so that I may pass unhindered from one part of my territory to
the other, I will give you many islands on the river."

"That is a foolish palaver," said B'limisaka; "for you have no islands
to give."

"Now I tell you, B'limisaka," said Bosambo, "my young men are crying out
against you, for, as you know, you have planted your trees on the high
ground, and my people, taking to their canoes, must climb down to the
water's edge a long way, so that it wearies their legs, soon, I fear, I
shall not hold them, for they are very fierce and full of arrogance."

"Lord," said B'limisaka, significantly, "my young men are also fierce."

The palaver was dispersing, and the last of the Lombobo councillors were
disappearing in the forest, when the Diggers of the Well came through
the forbidden territory to the place where Bosambo sat.

"We are they of whom you have heard, O my Lord," said the old man, who
led them, "also we carry a book for you."

He unwound the cloth about his thin middle, and with many fumblings
produced a paper which Bosambo read.

"From M'ilitani, by Ogibo's village in the Akasava.

"To Bosambo--may God preserve him!

"I give this to the chief of Well diggers that you shall know they