dead or dying. The
remainder of the soldiers were fighting desperately with whatever
weapons they found to their hands--for, with characteristic carefulness,
they had laid their rifles away in oil, lest the river air rust
them--and, save for the sentry, who used a rifle common to all, they
were unarmed.

"O dogs!" roared Bones.

The invaders turned and faced the long-barrelled Webleys, and the fight
was finished. Later, Wafa came to the bridge with bright steel manacles
on his wrist. His companions in the mad adventure sat on the iron deck
below, roped leg to leg, and listened with philosophic calm as the
Houssa sentry drew lurid pictures of the fate which awaited them.

Bones sat in his deep chair, and the prisoner squatted before him. "You
shall tell my lord Sandi why you did this wickedness," he said, "also,
Wafa, what evil thought was in your mind."

"Lord," said Wafa cheerfully, "what good comes to me if I speak?"
Something about the man's demeanour struck Bones as strange, and he rose
and went close to him.

"I see," he said, with a tightened lip. "The palaver is finished."

They led the man away, and the girl, who had been a spectator, asked
anxiously: "What is wrong, Bones?"

But the young man shook his head. "The breaking of all that Sanders has
worked for," he said bitterly, and the very absence of levity in one
whose heart was so young and gay struck a colder chill to the girl's
heart than the yells of the warring N'gombi. For Sanders had a big place
in Patricia Hamilton's life. In an hour the _Zaire_ was refloated, and
was going at full speed down stream.

* * * * *

Sanders held his court in the thatched palaver house between the Houssa
guard-room and the little stockade prison at the river's edge--a prison
hidden amidst the flowering shrubs and acacia trees.

Wafa was the first to be examined. "Lord," he said, without
embarrassment, "I tell you this--that I will not speak of the great
wonders which lay in my heart unless you give me a book[6] that I shall
go free."

[Footnote 6: A written promise.]

Sanders smiled unpleasantly. "By the Prophet, I say what is true," he
began confidentially; and Wafa winced at the oath, for he knew that
truth was coming, and truth of a disturbing character. "In this land I
govern millions of men," said Sanders, speaking deliberately, "I and two
white lords. I govern by fear, Wafa, because there is no love in simple
native men,