It was a splendid evening they spent, dining on chicken and palm-oil chop, rice pudding and sweet potatoes. Hamilton sang, "Who wouldn't be a soldier in the Army?" and--by request--in his shaky falsetto baritone, "My heart is in the Highlands"; and Lieut. Tibbetts gave a lifelike imitation of Frank Tinney, which convulsed, not alone his superior officer, but some two-and-forty men of the Houssas who were unauthorized spectators through various windows and door cracks and ventilating gauzes. Bones was the son of a man who had occupied a position of some importance on the Coast, and though the young man's upbringing had been in England, he had the inestimable advantage of a very thorough grounding in the native dialect, not only from Tibbetts, senior, but from the two native servants with whom the boy had grown up. "I suppose there is a telegraph line to headquarters?" asked Bones that night before they parted. "Certainly, my dear lad," replied Hamilton. "We had it laid down when we heard you were coming." "Don't flither!" pleaded Bones, giggling convulsively; "but the fact is I've got a couple of dozen tickets in the Cambridgeshire Sweepstake, an' a dear pal of mine--chap named Goldfinder, a rare and delicate bird--has sworn to wire me if I've drawn a horse. D'ye think I'll draw a horse?" "I shouldn't think you could draw a cow," said Hamilton. "Go to bed." "Look here, Ham----" began Lieut. Bones. "To bed! you insubordinate devil!" said Hamilton, sternly. In the meantime there was trouble in the Akasava country. II Scarcely had Sanders left the land, when the _lokali_ of the Lower Isisi sent the news thundering in waves of sound. Up and down the river and from village to village, from town to town, across rivers, penetrating dimly to the quiet deeps of the forest the story was flung. N'gori, the Chief of the Akasava, having some grievance against the Government over a question of fine for failure to collect according to the law, waited for no more than this intelligence of Sandi's going. His swift loud drums called his people to a dance-of-many-days. A dance-of-many-days spells "spears" and spears spell trouble. Bosambo heard the message in the still of the early night, gathered five hundred fighting men, swept down on the Akasava city in the drunken dawn, and carried away two thousand spears of the sodden N'gori. A sobered Akasava city woke up and rubbed its eyes to find strange Ochori sentinels in the street and Bosambo in a sky-blue table-cloth, edged with golden fringe, stalking majestically through the high places of the city. "This I do," said Bosambo to a shocked N'gori, "because my lord Sandi placed me here to hold the king's peace." "Lord Bosambo," said the king sullenly, "what peace do I break when I summon my young men and maidens to dance?"