ller: I be good
feller, sah--C'istian, sah! Matt'ew, Marki, Luki, Johni--I savvy dem
fine."

Happily, Bones continued the conversation in the tongue of the land.
Then he learned of the dance which Bosambo had frustrated, of the spears
taken, and these he saw stacked in three huts.

Bones, despite the character he gave himself, was no fool, and,
moreover, he had the advantage of knowing of the new N'gombi spears that
were going out to the Akasava day by day; and when Bosambo told of the
midnight summons that had come to him, Bones did the rapid exercise of
mental figuring which is known as putting two and two together.

He wagged his head when Bosambo had finished his recital, did this
general of twenty-one. "You're a jolly old sportsman, Bosambo," he said
very seriously, "and you're in the dooce of a hole, if you only knew it.
But you trust old Bones--he'll see you through. By Gad!"

Bosambo, bewildered but resourceful, hearing, without understanding,
replied: "I be fine feller, sah!"

"You bet your life you are, old funnyface," agreed Bones, and screwed
his eyeglass in the better to survey his protege.

IV

Chief N'gori organized a surprise party for Bosambo, and took so much
trouble with the details, that, because of his sheer thoroughness, he
deserved to have succeeded. _Lokali_ men concealed in the bush were
waiting to announce the coming of the rescue party, when N'gori sent his
cry for help crashing across the world. Six hundred spearmen stood ready
to embark in fifty canoes, and five hundred more waited on either bank
ready to settle with any survivors of the Ochori who found their way to
land.

The best of plans are subject to the banal reservation, "weather
permitting," and the signal intended to bring Bosambo to his destruction
was swallowed up in the bellowings of the storm.

"This night being fine," said N'gori, showing his teeth, "Bosambo will
surely come."

His Chief Counsellor, an ancient man of the royal tribe,[2] had
unexpected warnings to offer. A man had seen a man, who had caught a
glimpse of the _Zaire_ butting her way upstream in the dead of night.
Was it wise, when the devil Sandi waited to smite, and so close at hand,
to engage in so high an adventure?

[Footnote 2: That which I call the Akasava proper is the very small,
dominant clan of a tribe which is loosely called "Akasava," but is
really Bowongo.]

"Old man, there is a hut in the forest for you," said N'gori, with
signifi