were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours
until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the
_Zaire_ clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of
his salvage.

He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck,
and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal
she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore
a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced
deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing
ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.

"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.

The rest of the journey was uneventful until the _Zaire_ had reached the
northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly
cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on
which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had
isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.

Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea
through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and
western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the
bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with
a sense of his resourcefulness--and incidentally present himself in the
most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily
life.

He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now....

The _Zaire_ was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and
agile person might have stepped ashore.

M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.

He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the
space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in
such breeze as there was.

"Hi! Don't do that ... naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but
she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of
the _Zaire_ began to thresh madly astern.

Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An
ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no
ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing
propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one
stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed,
in two bounds he was over the rai