hat the
crocodiles had him, and if he asks us who slew B'chumbiri--for it may be
that he knows--let none speak, and afterwards we will tell M'ilitani
that we did not understand him."

With this arrangement all agreed; for surely here was a palaver not to
be feared.

Bones came with his escort of Houssas.

From the dark interiors of thatched huts men and women watched his thin
figure going up the street, and laughed.

Nor did they laugh softly. Bones heard the chuckles of unseen people,
divined that contempt, and his lips trembled. He felt an immense
loneliness--all the weight of government was pressed down upon his head,
it overwhelmed, it smothered him.

Yet he kept a tight hold upon himself, and by a supreme effort of will
showed no sign of his perturbation.

The palaver was of little value to Bones; the village was blandly
innocent of murder or knowledge of murder. More than this, all men
stoutly swore that the thing that lay upon the foreshore for
identification, surrounded by a crowd of frowning and frightened little
boys lured by the very gruesomeness of the spectacle, was unknown, and
laughed openly at the suggestion that it was B'chumbiri, who (said they)
had gone a Journey into the forest.

There was little short of open mockery and defiance when they pointed
out certain indications that went to prove that this man was not of the
Akasava, but of the higher Isisi.

So Bones' visit was fruitless.

He dismissed the palaver and walked back to his ship, and worked the
river, village by village, with no more satisfactory result. That night
in the little town of M'fa there was a dance and a jubilation to
celebrate the cunning of a people who had outwitted and overawed the
lords of the land, but the next day came Bosambo, who had established a
system of espionage more far-reaching, and possibly more effective, than
the service which the Government had instituted.

Liberties they might take with Bones; but they sat discomforted in
palaver before this alien chief, swathed in monkey tails, his shield in
one hand, and his bunch of spears in the other.

"All things I know," said Bosambo, when they told him what they had to
tell, "and it has come to me that you have spoken lightly of Tibbetti,
who is my friend and my master, and is well beloved of Sandi. Also they
tell me that you smiled at him. Now I tell you there will come a day
when you will not smile, and that day is near at hand."

"Lord," said the chie