ing Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept
contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his
post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful--Yoka, whose hands
turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river
ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.

Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes
its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow passages
between. At this season only one such passage--the centre of all--is
safe. This is known as "The Passage of the Tree," because all boats,
even the _Zaire_, must pass so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a
great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the
current is never strong here, for the passage is a shallow one. Yoka
felt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer
to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose
dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more
than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging
between bough and water.

"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset
is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"

* * * * *

Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his
head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his
thought was accompanied by strange guttural noises.

Patricia Hamilton was also thinking, but much more gracefully. Boosoobi
sat by his furnace door, nodding. Sometimes he looked at the steam
gauge, sometimes he kicked open the furnace door and chucked in a few
billets of wood, but, in the main, he was listening to the soothing
"chook-a-chook, chook-a-chook" of his well-oiled engines.

"Woo-yow!" yawned Bones, stretched himself, and came blinking into the
sunlight. The sun was nearly setting.

"What the dooce----" said Bones. He stared round.

The _Wiggle_ had run out from the mouth of the river and was at sea.
There was no sign of land of any description. The low-lying shores of
the territory had long since gone under the horizon.

Bones laid his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping girl, and she woke
with a start.

"Dear old shipmate," he said, and his voice trembled, "we're alone on
this jolly old ocean! Lost the steersman!"

She realized the seriousness of the situation in a moment.

T