"You see, old Bones," said Hamilton, and now his friend heard the weariness and the weakness in his voice, "Sanders has a hold on these chaps that I haven't quite got ... and ... and ... well, you haven't got at all. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you're young, Bones, and these devils know how amiable you are." "I'm an ass, sir," muttered Bones, shakily, "an' somehow I understand that this is the time in my jolly old career when I oughtn't to be an ass.... I'm sorry, sir." Hamilton smiled up at him. "It isn't for Sanders' sake or mine or your own, Bones--but for--well, for the whole crowd of us--white folk. You'll have to do your best, old man." Bones took the other's hand, snivelled a bit despite his fierce effort of restraint, and went aboard the _Zaire_. * * * * * "Tell all men," said B'chumbiri, addressing his impassive relatives, "that I go to a great day and to many strange lands." He was tall and knobby-kneed, spoke with a squeak at the end of his deeper sentences, and about his tired eyes he had made a red circle with camwood. Round his head he had twisted a wire so tightly that it all but cut the flesh: this was necessary, for B'chumbiri had a headache which never left him day or night. Now he stood, his lank body wrapped in a blanket, and he looked with dull eyes from face to face. "I see you," he said at last, and repeated his motto which had something to do with monkeys. They watched him go down the street towards the beech where the easiest canoe in the village was moored. "It is better if we go after him and put out his eyes," said his elder brother; "else who knows what damage he will do for which we must pay?" Only B'chumbiri's mother looked after him with a mouth that drooped at the side, for he was her only son, all the others being by other wives of Mochimo. His father and his uncle stood apart and whispered, and presently when, with a great waving of arms, B'chumbiri had embarked, they went out of the village by the forest path and ran tirelessly till they struck the river at its bend. "Here we will wait," panted the uncle, "and when B'chumbiri comes we will call him to land, for he has the sickness _mongo_." "What of Sandi?" asked the father, who was no gossip. "Sandi is gone," replied the other, "and there is no law." Presently B'chumbiri came sweeping round the bend, singing in his poor, cracked voice about a land and a people and treasures ... he turned his canoe at his father's bidding, and came obediently to land.... Overhead the sky was a vivid blue, and the water which moved quickly between the rocky channel of the Lower Isisi caught something of the blue, though the thick green of elephant grass by the water's edge and the overhanging spread of gum trees took away from the clarity of reflection.